Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ash worms come from below.

No one knows much more than that. They are creatures of mystery. Some say they are kin to the sand worms of the Smoldering Lake, although they spit rock rather than lightning. Certainly they look much like their Carthus counterparts: thick and long as a tree is tall, armored in stony plates, heads formed of four segments that open like petals to expose rings and rings of teeth. Others say they are a new type of creature entirely, spawned in dark by Dark.

What Irithyll’s hunters know for certain is that they cause gaping sinkholes and kill people and animals if given the chance.

They are also very good to eat.

And tonight’s prey is ready to fall.

It erupted from the ground late in the evening, showering the frosty plain outside Irithyll with rubble. The hunters have been harrying it with magic for hours to wear it down. Now, as the end of the hunt approaches, they have set a ring of silver torches around their quarry to light their way, and between each torch, a harpoon.

Gwyndolin of Irithyll has fought alongside his warriors all night. Now, for them, he will finish this.

He is clad in the blue-and-silver Darkmoon uniform, catalyst in hand, cheeks numb with the wind, white headdress streaming behind him. He is flying across the frozen grass astride a boreal wolf the size of a small horse. The wolf’s name is Madoc, and Yorshka - thoughtful, brilliant Yorshka - tamed him to act as Gwyndolin’s legs in battle.

Madoc weaves in and out between the harpoons, each one manned by one of Gwyndolin’s knights, carrying him closer to the worm. Faces flash past him in a blur; voices mingle as they urge him on. Rhythmic explosions split the night as the harpoon guns fire. Gwyndolin sees a dozen spears, six on each side, arc overhead and bury themselves in the worm’s rocky scales. The attached ropes creak and strain to pin the creature down. They will not hold for long. They do not need to.

Madoc bears Gwyndolin along the worm’s side. He strafes it with a volley of purple stars from his catalyst: one last assault before the finishing blow. Gwyndolin knows he has lingered too long when he sees the worm coil up for a strike, but he does not care. He keeps his catalyst raised, launching his stars until the moment the worm’s tail, solid as an oak, sweeps towards him. Madoc swerves to avoid it. Gwyndolin loses his hold on the wolf’s fur and tumbles to the ground. 

The breath whooshes from his lungs. He looks up, wheezing and curiously calm, and watches the worm’s jagged tail drive down at him.

Then Sirris is beside him in a burst of blue light, throwing up a magical barrier with one hand and pushing Gwyndolin out of the way with the other. Gwyndolin has just enough time to roll aside. Sirris, too, throws herself away as the barrier shatters under the worm’s impact. The creature strikes the ground with a force that jars Gwyndolin’s bones. Then Madoc is licking his face and nudging him up onto his back, and they are flying once more.

Gwyndolin lifts both hands from Madoc’s fur and leans back, back, back towards the slivered moon he makes with his knights. He draws an invisible bowstring and looses a single luminous arrow.

The metal rain begins. Gwyndolin is dimly aware that his people are roaring their encouragement as hundreds of golden arrows pour down.

The worm thrashes and then crashes to the ground with such a quake that bystanders lose their footing. 

Amidst all this, Gwyndolin sees Dunstan’s dark form dart between the arrows, straight into the worm’s toothy mouth. His claymore flashes and drives up through the creature’s head.

The beast shudders and goes still. 

Gwyndolin falls back into himself in a rush. His chest is heaving, his side pulsing angrily where he fell, and he is so alive.

(He even forgot for a moment that in his dreams, he wanders once more the barren wasteland at the end of the world. He has not done that since before he decided to end Fire. Now the ash dreams have returned to him.)

He lifts his catalyst high and joins his people in shouting to the black, starless sky. Madoc howls along with them. Tonight, they are victorious.

Gwyndolin’s knees buckle as he slips from Madoc’s back into the grass. The wolf whines and licks him until he gets to his feet again. Gwyndolin ruffles his shaggy fur and allows him to wander off and claim his share of the kill. 

Soon the hunters will swarm over the worm, beginning the long process of slicing through its armor with diamond-edged blades. Then they will carve the meat into pieces small enough to load into wagons and take home to Irithyll. It will feed the populace for many months if it is well-distributed. Even knowing this, however, Gwyndolin does not linger near the fallen creature to watch. He has no stomach for this part of the hunt.

Instead he seeks out his sister on the fringe of the crowd, where the wounded are seated on overturned crates or lying on mats. Dressed in sturdy leathers, her hair bound up in a braid, her spear on her back just in case, Yorshka looks nothing like her former self. Her hands move with surety as she locates each person’s injuries and rings her chime over them. “Be still,” she tells each one. “Thou shalt soon mend.” And then golden light wells beneath her hands, and cuts draw closed and bones knit back together. When she looks up from her last patient and catches Gwyndolin’s eye, she smiles with pride.

Yorshka has grown a great deal in the past year. She spent it under Morgott’s tutelage, learning the fundamentals of combat - not enough, as the Omen King promised, to make a warrior of her, but sufficient for self-defense. Morgott is as demanding of Yorshka as he was of Gwyndolin: her training is difficult, her progress slow. It also proves to her, with every session and every small improvement, that she is capable of more than she knows. That revelation likewise gives her confidence to pursue healing, her true gift, with renewed vigor. Reassured by the knowledge of how to extricate herself from danger if need be, she now acts as a battlefield medic to Irithyll’s hunters in their fights against the ash worms and the dregs of Deep. What she has lost in softness, she has gained in courage. Much as it unsettles Gwyndolin, it does Yorshka good to be out here with him, easing pain wherever she can.

Now she pulls him down onto a barrel she has commandeered as a stool. Her eyes, vivid blue even in the washed-out firelight, burn into Gwyndolin’s. 

“Art thou well?” she asks.

“I am but a trifle bruised,” Gwyndolin tells her. He is too full of adrenaline to feel much of the soreness overtaking his side. “I shall stay with thee until thy work is done, if thou wishest.”

Yorshka looks her brother up and down. Her eyes narrow just as Gwyndolin’s do when he assesses a new illusion. “Thou’rt chilled,” she says. “Prithee go home and warm thyself. I shall be along presently. Few are wounded tonight, and none gravely.”

“As thou wilt, my lady.” Gwyndolin holds a fist to his chest in the Darkmoon salute.

The gesture makes Yorshka giggle, but Gwyndolin means it sincerely. This new, practical version of his sister never fails to surprise and delight him. She is no longer the sobbing little girl who fled Ariamis, nor a tyrant’s hostage awaiting her fate. Instead, despite all her hardships, she is becoming a woman of poise and compassion.

Yorshka touches Gwyndolin’s shoulder, then returns to the injured resting on their makeshift stools and pallets. Gwyndolin notes with a touch of satisfaction that none of them are his apprentices - now properly his knights, though he still isn’t used to thinking of them as such. Dunstan is among them, however. He sits on a crate not far away, his tunic pulled up to expose a long scratch down his back. One of the worm’s teeth must have grazed him.

Elisabeth is cleaning the cut. Gwyndolin knows it is her even before she lifts her face from the shadows, because only she could convince Dunstan to sit still and accept treatment. The Unkindled is negligent about his own well-being: a side effect, Gwyndolin supposes, of being immune to true death for so long. After all, cuts and bruises would hardly matter to one assured of resurrection at the nearest bonfire.

Presently, Elisabeth begins to work a healing incantation over Dunstan’s injury. Upon seeing Gwyndolin, Dunstan looks up at him and rolls his eyes in a halfhearted sort of way. They both know he does not truly mind his wife’s ministrations; quite the opposite. It is clear from the way Dunstan rests his head on Elisabeth’s shoulder, a tenderness he would never have exhibited in public a year ago, that he is glad he asked for her hand in marriage.

“Will he live, dear lady?” Gwyndolin asks the former Fire Keeper with mock somberness. Already he can see the edges of Dunstan’s cut drawing together and scabbing over.

Elisabeth kisses the top of her husband’s head. “Perhaps.”

Dunstan tugs a strand of Elisabeth’s fair hair loose from her braid. “I’ve had worse.” Then his gaze meets Gwyndolin’s, and he is suddenly serious. “Might’ve been worse for you too. I saw you fall. If that worm had come down on you, you’d have died.”

“But it did not. Sirris saw to that,” Gwyndolin says patiently. This is not the first time in recent weeks that the Unkindled has expressed such concerns. Gwyndolin thinks this new, almost paternal fretting has something to do with the fact that by next year, Dunstan will be a father.

The Unkindled is not pacified; indeed, he aims his next words at Gwyndolin’s heart: “You’re too careless with your own life. Your sister can’t lose you again.”

Gwyndolin stiffens. So does Elisabeth, the golden glow beneath her fingers faltering a little. “Be not uncharitable, my love,” she says. “Surely Master Gwyndolin is not to blame for his own imprisonment.”

“Of course he ain’t. I’m only saying…I don’t think Yorshka can stand any more hurt.”

“Yorshka knoweth I return to her always,” Gwyndolin says - sharp, but not as sharp as he intended. He cannot fault the Unkindled for trying to keep Yorshka safe.

But again Dunstan does not relent. He folds his arms across his chest, settling in for a long argument. “Is that so? Does she know you refuse to wear anything warm? Does she know about the time I had to carry you home because you got all wet fighting those Deep soul dregs and you were so cold you couldn’t pick yourself up off the street?”

It is true that Gwyndolin goes into battle wearing silks that offer little warmth or protection, but for good reason: those same silks amplify his magic. Dunstan knows this full well.

Indignant now, Gwyndolin crosses his own arms. If Dunstan wants a fight, he shall get it.

“Thou think’st me weak?” he demands. 

“I never said that. I went to the bloody kiln with you! Do you think I’d have done that if I thought you were weak?”

“I should hope not.” Gwyndolin does not know why he is letting Dunstan irk him. The Unkindled has - has always had - a way of piercing Gwyndolin’s composure. “Hear this. Upon my birth, the midwife feared I would not live to see my first year. Mine heart would fail me, she thought, or illness take me. Certainly I would not walk. Yet we found a way, my serpents and I, and now here I stand, last of all my family.”

“Not last, if luck is with us,” Dunstan interjects: a peace offering. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me, you know.”

“I will fight beside my people, Unkindled, cold and wet and all. I will not be locked away.”

Dunstan sighs. His set jaw relaxes a bit. “I won’t ever lock you away, Lin. Just listen to me, will you? I know you lost a lot of years to your duty, and now that you’re free, you want to live as much as you can. I understand that, I promise you. But…don’t live so much that you get yourself killed, all right? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

The Unkindled does not say things like this lightly. Now Gwyndolin begins to suspect this is more than a rehearsal for fatherhood, for the inevitable day when Dunstan must take his son or daughter to task for their recklessness. No, something is bothering him. Gwyndolin sees it in his dark eyes, which are unusually unguarded. Elisabeth knows it too; that is plain in the distracted way she smooths Dunstan’s shirt back down. She is listening and sensing with all her being, trying to divine the source of her husband’s unease.

“I see thou’rt troubled,” Gwyndolin says. “Is there aught thou wishest to reveal?”

Hast thou seen once more Fire's ashen desolation, as I have? Hath Elisabeth?

Dunstan huffs out a cloud of mist. “There is. There’s a few things, actually, but…not tonight, eh? We’re all tired.”

“Choose one.” Gwyndolin will not rest without hearing at least one piece of news.

“Well, Greirat found -”

“Stole.” (Greirat does not find anything.)

“Not stole -”

“Intercepted, then.”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

Scoffing, Gwyndolin sits down in the crackling grass by Dunstan’s crate.

“That’s better,” Dunstan says. “I was trying to say that Greirat happened on a messenger bird with a letter for Eira.”

Gwyndolin almost laughs in relief. This is strange news, but not so dire as he thought it might be.

“Eira?” he repeats. “Her name is not known beyond Irithyll’s walls.”

“You’d be surprised how news travels in Lothric. I hardly said a word to anyone while I was hunting Lords of Cinder, but somehow Sirris heard I was ‘gentle of heart.’ Don’t know where she got that idea.”

“She heard rightly, as I know well,” Elisabeth counters, touching Dunstan’s arm.

Dunstan says nothing but rests his hand over hers. “Maybe your knights spread Eira’s story. She’s a hero to them.”

And I know how they talk, Gwyndolin thinks. “But who on earth would send word to her here? She is not of this world.”

“They didn’t send word to her, exactly,” Dunstan goes on, scratching his head as he often does when he is perplexed. “They didn’t use her name. There’s no one else they could mean, though: they said they want a duel with a warrior who uses red lightning.”

The fine hair on the back of Gwyndolin’s neck prickles. That does indeed sound like his dear friend Eira, the only wielder of red lightning Lothric has ever seen. 

“Whence came this message?” he asks. The way Greirat gets around, it could be anywhere from the turrets of Lothric Castle to the depths of Irithyll Dungeon. 

Dunstan becomes very interested in the crate he is sitting on. “From Archdragon Peak.”

“I know of no such place,” Gwyndolin says, yet deep within him something stirs.

“Most people don’t, I expect. You need a secret gesture to get in; you can’t just walk up the mountain. That’s the point: the people who live there don’t want to be found. They’re all…what’s the word? People who make themselves uncomfortable on purpose.”

“Ascetics?” Elisabeth suggests.

“That’s it. They’re trying to become dragons. I took a look, but I didn’t stay long. The place was full of snake people.”

Gwyndolin arches one brow. “And what, pray, is thine opposition to ‘snake people’?’”

Elisabeth giggles behind her hand. Even Dunstan smiles.

“These weren’t like you,” he says, lighter now. “They reminded me of Sen’s Fortress, and that was more than enough for me.”

“Not for naught was Sen’s Fortress known as the gods’ proving ground,” Gwyndolin says, with a flutter of guilt in his stomach. The trials to which he and Frampt subjected the Undead on their road to Anor Londo were often cruel, and all in the name of deception. “Tell me, where is this land of ascetics?”

Dunstan gestures vaguely westward. “You can see it from Anor Londo. It’s the mountain with the ruins on top.”

There are many mountains with ruins atop their peaks. If one such mountain is visible from Anor Londo, Gwyndolin has taken no particular notice of it, not in all the times he has stood moonlight duty.

Then a realization strikes him, so obvious he wonders why he did not see it upon hearing the name “Archdragon Peak.” His skin begins to tingle with anticipation and something he cannot quite identify, something sobering. Judging from Dunstan’s sudden silence and downcast eyes, the Unkindled feels it too.

“Who issued this challenge?” Gwyndolin asks. 

He does not know which answer he hopes for, because if his suspicions are correct, that means Gwynhael has been alive and in sight of Anor Londo for many years, perhaps ever since the Lords’ homelands converged on Lothric. It also means he has not once sought Gwyndolin out. Not even when Sulyvahn and Aldrich staged their coup. The thought makes Gwyndolin’s chest tighten: loss and love and hurt all knotted together.

“It’s not signed,” Dunstan says. Gwyndolin exhales sharply, and Dunstan puts a hand on his shoulder. “But Archdragon Peak is as good a place as any to look for your brother. Maybe Eira should go. She’ll sort this out.”

Gwyndolin is certain Eira can withstand Gwynhael’s might: the Tarnished, as she once said, are born god-hunters. He is less certain he wants to know the truths that might be revealed once the duel is over. There can be only two reasons Gwynhael has not come to Irithyll: something is very wrong with him, or - perhaps worse - he does not want to see his younger brother at all.

Gwyndolin’s ears begin to ring as if he has been struck in the head. Sounds muffle. Only when Dunstan shakes him does he realize he has fallen into the shadows on his heart. He comes back to himself with a little gasp.

“You all right?” Dunstan asks. “You…went away.”

Gwyndolin tries to smile. “Forgive me.”

“I asked if you think Eira will go.”

“Thou knowest her nature: she will go, and eagerly, I daresay.”

“Then give her the message. She’s coming to visit tonight, ain’t she?”

Dunstan holds out a folded parchment. When Gwyndolin takes it, it is rough and hard beneath his fingers, as if reinforced with something stony. He dares not unfold it, for he fears he will recognize Gwynhael’s scrawling handwriting, letters half-formed in haste. Instead he tucks it into his waistband unopened. 

“Morgott will mislike this,” he says, to distract himself from his trembling fingers.

“That will not hinder the young Elden Lord, if half the tales be true,” Elisabeth says softly.

The affection in her voice lifts some of the tension, reminding Gwyndolin that no matter what happens, no matter what changes, he always has his first friend’s support. He needs such reminders, even now. He lived in solitude for so long that calling upon companions for aid - having companions at all - still feels strange.

He lets out the stiffness that has been accumulating in his shoulders ever since Dunstan mentioned the letter. “I will speak to Eira when next I see her,” he says. “Now I think perhaps we should bid goodnight. If thou bearest other tidings, Unkindled, they must wait ’til we are rested.”

Dunstan looks back at the rimed grass. “Some of it’s not good.”

Gwyndolin thinks once more of his all-too-familiar ashen visions. “I too have ill news to share.” Perhaps ’tis the same as thine.

“All the more reason to get some sleep, then.” Dunstan stands, cautiously flexing the muscles of his back so as not to aggravate his injury, and slips his arm through Elisabeth’s. “Especially you,” he says to her. “Not sure you should be out here, really.”

“My time is distant yet,” Elisabeth says easily, yet she rests one protective hand on her belly. 

“For once I am in accord with thine husband,” Gwyndolin tells her. “Guard thine health. Precious few children were born this past age, in the time of Fire’s dwindling. I will rejoice to welcome the life thou bearest into being.”

Elisabeth looks down, not in shame or modesty but as if to glimpse the new life growing within her. Her eyes shine in the torchlight, and Gwyndolin thinks they may be full of tears. He can imagine how wondrous this is for her. By ancient law, Fire Keepers neither married nor bore children; now Elisabeth is free to do both - and anything else she might want. When she took the First Flame in her small hands, she broke her chains.

“As will I,” she murmurs, “and mine husband also.” 

Dunstan scuffs his toes against the ground. “Don’t think I’m suited to fatherhood.”

“Nonsense,” Gwyndolin says. And then, unbalanced by the letter from Archdragon Peak, he goes on before he can stop himself: “Unkindled, should thy child be…different in any way…”

Dunstan’s face softens. “Lin. Don’t worry about that. I’m not going to make your father’s mistakes. Whatever happens, I will love this bairn.”

Gwyndolin knows he has just been given a gift: Dunstan does not often speak of gentle things like love. “Even if…’tis a snake person?”

Dunstan smiles at this, but his voice remains sober. “Even then.”

~~~

Irithyll is nearby, just across the field and the long stone bridge where Dunstan fought one of Sulyvahn’s beasts, yet to Gwyndolin the walk feels much longer than it is. Now that the rush of battle is leaving him, he can feel his side throbbing where he fell on it. His stomach is squirming from the mana draughts he took tonight. They do not agree with him at all, cold and gritty as they are. He imagines ashen estus was much the same, and he does not know how Dunstan could stand it. But he needs them. His magic is more limited now that Fire is gone and Gwyn’s fragmented soul no longer burns within him to give him strength.

He is tempted to unbuckle his leather waistband to ease his stomach, but he does not think he could manage it with his cold, armored fingers. He grimaces and rests a hand on his midsection. He’ll be fortunate if he does not get sick in the bushes by his doorstep. They’re liable to turn bright blue if he does.

By the time he reaches home, he is shivering and stumbling but satisfied with the night’s work. By his strength and that of his people, Irithyll is well-fed. He can rest warm in that knowledge.

He knows even before he enters his sitting room and sees that his hearth and wall sconces are lit - which is not how he left them - that Eira is here. He can sense the interwoven rings to which she is bound: light and life, warm as sunlight, deep as ancient roots.

He squints into the flickering silver dimness. “Eira?”

In answer, the Elden Lord peers around the edge of an armchair. “Lin!”

She gets to her feet with her usual vigor and embraces Gwyndolin, holds him tight even though his armor must be digging into her. She is small and taut in Gwyndolin’s arms, humming with life and smelling of Altus’s piney heights. Gwyndolin returns her embrace with all his strength, sore side and irritated stomach be damned. It is, as always, a miracle to be so close to another person.

“Sweet friend,” he says into her scruffy brown hair. With those words he closes the gap of weeks between them. Now they can pick up exactly where they left off when last they saw each other, as if they were never apart.

Eira draws back to assess his face. “Lin, you’re frozen!” she scolds in her mother-bear way.

“I come from the hunt.”

“I missed it?” Her face falls. She glances over her shoulder at the jagged bronze spear leaning against the fireplace. “But I brought my lightning.”

“Next time thou may’st join us, perhaps. We cannot know for certain when the worms will rise. This one emerged sooner than we judged.”

Unbidden comes the thought of the letter tucked into Gwyndolin’s waistband. Even so, thy weapon may yet see use.

“You won, though?” Eira asks.

“We did, and soundly.”

“Good.” Eira says this with fierce joy, the same with which she cheered for Gwyndolin the first time he cast Comet Azur. “Now you can get warm. I’ll put your kettle on. At least you’re not all wet this time.”

Gwyndolin laughs softly. On one of Eira’s earlier visits, Gwyndolin came home soaked to the bone from a battle with the dregs of Deep - soul sprites not unlike humanity but angrier, long-repressed, and full of stagnant water. Eira all but pushed him upstairs to change clothes while she rummaged in his cupboards in search of both tea and kettle. Siegward, amused by Eira’s eagerness and not at all offended she had usurped his position as de facto cook, made no attempt to stop her. Tonight, Siegward is helping to butcher the ash worm and will not be back for hours, so the tea-making once again falls to Eira.

Gwyndolin knows he should do it himself: Eira is his guest, after all. He also knows better than to argue with her.

“Let me fuss,” she says, sensing his thoughts. “You’re exhausted and I’m not.”

She is right, of course: Gwyndolin is very tired and very cold.

“I suspect ’twas thou who lit my fire also,” he says. “I know well thou’rt a pyromancer.”

Eira shrugs. “Not really, not like Dunstan. I just do a bit of flame magic here and there.”

She is being modest: although she favors lightning, her “bit of flame magic” struck a decisive blow against Aldrich.

Before Gwyndolin can argue, Eira turns him gently towards the stairs. “Go on.”

“When wilt thou permit me to show thee proper hospitality?” Gwyndolin asks over his shoulder, without any real indignance. Eira just laughs.

Upstairs in the quiet of his bedchamber, by the light of Yorshka’s flowers, Gwyndolin removes his Darkmoon armor piece by piece. After cleaning the dust from both plate and mail, he wraps them in oilcloth and tucks them away in their storage chest. His sweat-soaked shirt, leggings, and headdress he leaves to be washed later. It is a long process, and a strange one. Gwyndolin has never gotten used to wearing this uniform, whether on moonlight duty or in battle. When he takes it off, he feels as if he is undressing someone else. Surely it is cannot be Dark Sun Gwyndolin, with his retiring nature and fragile body, standing here attired as company captain. It cannot be Dark Sun Gwyndolin who led his people against the ash worm tonight with a courage Gwyn never recognized in him.

It cannot be, because Dark Sun Gwyndolin is dead. It was Lin who wore the armor and led the hunt and put out the First Flame.

And he is Lin.

Sometimes he still struggles to believe that.

As he washes the grime of battle from his face, he decides that is to be expected. After all, he has only been Lin for a few years: a blink of an eye compared to the long, long ages he spent as Anor Londo’s steward. He needs time to grow into his new, true self.

He slips on his dressing gown and folds his favorite shawl, embroidered with gold lilies, about his shoulders. Then he makes his way back downstairs, still marveling that his skin - his own! - smells of sweat rather than perfumed silk.

Eira is bent over the hearth when Gwyndolin reaches the sitting room. The kettle she has hung on the fire is whistling. As she takes the pot from its hook and lifts the lid, the sharp scent of mint wafts into the room.

Gwyndolin sinks onto the sofa and curls into a ball beneath his shawl. He takes a deep, grateful breath of the steam from the kettle and feels the mint begin to soothe his stomach. The fire’s heat soaks into his limbs, warming his fingers and toes for the first time since the hunt began. His eyelids begin to grow heavy.

Never mind propriety; he has no desire to stop Eira from looking after him. On the contrary, he is very glad he gave her a key to his house.

Eira pours them both steaming mugs of tea. She puts Gwyndolin’s on the table beside the couch, then settles back in her armchair.

“It’s much quieter than the last time I was here,” she remarks with a playful smile. “You remember the Aldrich Plague?”

Gwyndolin gives a dramatic groan and immediately regrets it when the motion jars his stomach. He takes a sip of his fragrant tea, willing himself to breathe deep and easy. 

“I shall never forget it,” he says.

“I don’t think that was the final exam your prentices were expecting!”

“My poor birds. I did not intend to frighten them so.”

Originally, Gwyndolin planned for each of his apprentices to face an illusion of Aldrich, faster and armed with more magic than the real devourer he and Eira fought together: a test of nerve as much as skill. It was no different from the silver knights he conjured to defend Anor Londo - save that he wove his phantom Aldrich from darkness, not light. And darkness is a slippery medium. Spontaneous. Prone to absorbing emotions.

Gwyndolin really should have known better.

The upshot of all this was that he lost control of his illusion, and his single Aldrich became many. Soon there were great black worms all over Irithyll, coming up through drains and fountains and any source of water they could find. Some had snake tendrils; others puppeteered a shadowy, half-swallowed image of Gwyndolin himself - an attribute he very much did not give them. All of them rained sorcery down on the city.

And Eira, who had come for a visit, walked straight into a crisis.

Gwyndolin still remembers the explanation he offered her, breathy with alarm: “When an illusion is invested with particularly strong memories or emotions, it may on rare occasions acquire the ability to sustain itself and, er…become autonomous. The rest, I believe” - a somewhat hysterical laugh - “is evident.”

True to form, Eira leapt into battle, just as she did on the day she saved Gwyndolin’s life. His apprentices, too, matched the Aldriches spell for spell and arrow for arrow. After that, there was no doubt as to their readiness for knighthood.

Their saving grace was that the Aldriches were not very durable, although they did at one time attempt to merge. No one is certain what would have happened had they succeeded.

Eira grins to herself. “That was the best day I’d had in a long time.”

“I…might describe it somewhat differently.”

“Did you see the one that came up right underneath my feet? Got a good look at his teeth.”

Gwyndolin shudders so hard his teaspoon rattles inside his mug. “I did not, and I am glad of it!” 

He will never understand Eira’s cavalier attitude towards things most people would find horrifying. Dunstan exhibits much the same nonchalance. It must come with being undead.

“Threw a fireball right into his mouth,” Eira says, her smile now overtly satisfied. 

“I cannot condone thy recklessness, but I bless thy spirit.”

And now Gwyndolin must call upon it once more.

He can feel the letter pressing against him from a pocket of his nightdress, not allowing him to forget its presence. He must confront it. He will not have peace until he does: he cannot abide uncertainty, particularly not when it touches so near to his heart.

He takes a long drink and waits for his stomach to settle before he speaks.

“I fear thou wilt think me terribly rude for what I say next,” he begins cautiously. “I have no right to impose, not when thou’rt my guest, and so recently arrived.”

Eira leans forward, mug clasped in both hands. “What’s the matter?”

Gwyndolin takes the letter from his pocket and holds it out to her. “This came for thee.”

Her brows knit together. “For me?” She unfolds the parchment and peers at it. “This handwriting’s not easy to read. It’s…shaky.”

Gwyndolin says nothing. He will not look at it. He is not ready to see.

“‘To the warrior who wieldeth red lightning,’” Eira reads, slow but clear. “‘I would witness thy strange gift for myself. If thou art stout of heart and arm, come test thyself against me. I await thee beneath the great bell at Archdragon Peak.’”

Gwyndolin’s hand closes on a fistful of his nightrobe. It would be just like Gwynhael to challenge a warrior with a unique ability, especially a variant of the lightning he himself prizes - or prized. For all Gwyndolin knows, his brother left his lightning in Anor Londo.

Eira looks up at Gwyndolin. “This is an invitation to a duel,” she says. Her eyes are gleaming. She is not in the least frightened or threatened. Then her lips part in realization, and Gwyndolin knows the name “Archdragon Peak” has caught her attention just as it did his. “Didn’t you tell me your brother the war god went to live with the dragons?”

Gwyndolin smiles without warmth. “Precisely.”

“Then if he did send this letter, he told us where he is. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“It may be.”

“May be?”

Gwyndolin stares into his mug. His stomach clenches again, and this time it has nothing to do with the mana draughts he drank tonight. “I know not if my brother wisheth to see me. Why would he not seek me out - not once in all these years? ’Tis widely known that Irithyll is the seat of the moon.”

“Oh, Lin.” Eira puts her hand on Gwyndolin’s knee. “Maybe he doesn’t know you’re alive. Maybe he thinks you don’t want to see him. Maybe something is keeping him away from you. Don’t you want to go with me and see for yourself?”

Gwyndolin pulls his legs up to his chest. “I fear to see.”

“Then I’ll go alone. If there’s even a chance I could bring your brother back to you, I’m glad to do it. I know you love him.”

Gwyndolin closes his eyes. He knew convincing Eira would be the easy part. What comes after may be much more difficult.

“I am ashamed to ask this of thee,” he says. “I only ever send thee into danger.”

“Just like when we met, eh?”

It is, in a way: Eira is once again embarking on on a dangerous quest to a world not her own, against Morgott’s wishes, for Gwyndolin’s sake. Always there are cycles.

“I’ll have to tell Morgott and Miquella, and Morgott will say no,” she goes on. "I’ll ignore him. Maybe I can convince him to come with me. He might like to see your world’s dragons.” She squeezes Gwyndolin’s arm. “Don’t worry. It’ll come ‘round right in the end. It did last time.”

For proof of this, she looks down at the unadorned silver rings she and Gwyndolin are both wearing. Gwyndolin gave them to Eira, Morgott, and Miquella the day after his first glorious ball, and later to Dunstan and Yorshka. They function like homeward bones, transporting the wearer directly to Irithyll or Leyndell. Gwyndolin and his companions can now visit each other at any time, from any place, even when they are far from the doorway that connects their worlds. The rings are thus a symbol of how intertwined their lives have become, and how much things have changed for the better.

And yet, the ash dreams are a stark reminder that this peace may not last.

“Eira,” Gwyndolin begins, “I must tell thee, I have once more seen -”

At that moment the door opens and Yorshka comes in with a gust of wintry air. 

“Eira!” she cries.

She drops her spear in the entryway, dances across the room, and flings herself into the Elden Lord’s arms. Eira catches her with a soft grunt, her armchair sliding backwards a few inches, and pulls her close.

“Hello, love,” she chuckles. “You’re excited tonight, aren’t you?”

“It pleaseth me to heal our hunters,” Yorshka says with no small amount of dignity.

Gwyndolin feels himself warming from the inside out as he watches Yorshka wrap her arms around Eira. The two were fast friends from the moment they met, and since then Eira has become Yorshka’s mentor and inspiration. She often assists Morgott in training Yorshka to protect herself. Yorshka always comes home brimming with stories of how strong her two instructors are. How proud she must be to present herself to her surrogate sister tonight, clad in battle leathers and flushed with cold.

“Did you keep safe?” Eira asks, feigning sternness - ironic, given that she pays no heed to her own safety.

Yorshka nods. “I came not near unto the worm. I -”

What happens next is so swift and subtle that Gwyndolin only notices it because he is so attuned to his sister’s mannerisms: Yorshka stiffens in Eira’s arms. Her eyes glaze, as if she is looking at something both in the room and far beyond it. She draws one tiny, sharp breath.

Then she is smiling again and pretending she has simply lost her train of thought.

“I did not join the battle,” she finishes. Her voice is light, yet she comes to sit by Gwyndolin and rests her head on his shoulder. He can feel even through her sturdy clothes that she is trembling.

“Dearest one?” he prompts.

Yorshka does not respond. Gwyndolin knows then that he was not the only one to receive troubling news tonight.

He meets Eira’s eyes and sees she knows this too.

He decides to call a council. Tomorrow he will gather Yorshka, Dunstan, and Elisabeth together, and they will lay bare the tidings they have heard and visions they have seen. By now Gwyndolin knows better than to ignore such things.

He drains the last of his tea and tries to will the knots from his stomach. He isn’t sure he’s ready for another adventure.

Chapter Text

Gwyndolin wakes in his bed with no memory of how he got there. This does not concern him much. He supposes he must have gone up to his room after his conversation with Eira, or else Eira carried him there because his legs gave out - it would not be the first time. Either way, his mind is cloudy and his body heavy in a way that means he slept long and well.

He drifts contentedly while his mind clears. When it does, last night’s events return to him in a sobering flash: the letter from Archdragon Peak, Gwynhael’s survival, Yorshka’s odd behavior. 

He sits straight up, blankets falling away, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He has things to do. He must find the source of Yorshka’s unease. He must meet with Dunstan and hear whatever the Unkindled thought too grim to share after last night’s hunt. He must share his own ill news about the return of the ash dreams. Today is no day to stay in bed.

What time is it? Gwyndolin has not heard his cathedral clock toll the hour or half hour, so he has no way of knowing how late it is. All is dark save for the blue-green light of Yorshka’s flowers on his pillows and bedside table.

He throws a shawl around his shoulders and makes his way downstairs as fast as his stiff legs will carry him. The first floor is empty, but Siegward is clattering away in the cellar kitchen, stirring a pot on the fire. The onion knight never seems to run out of recipes for stew. More impressively, all of them are different, and all of them are hearty. Siegward’s current concoction has filled the kitchen with the not-unpleasant fungal scent of ash-worm meat. So he is preparing a bit of the kill.

Siegward looks up from the pot, his broad face flushed with the heat. “Ah, Master Gwyndolin! Would you care to taste the fruits of your hunt?”

Gwyndolin spares no time for pleasantries. “How many bells?”

“Eleven, last I heard.”

Eleven!

“Why was I permitted to sleep half the day away?” Gwyndolin demands, hands on hips. 

“You needed rest. You were out very late last night.”

“As wert thou, yet here thou art, quite awake.”

“It is different for me. I can snatch a wink or two whenever I please. I have made an art of nap-taking.”

Despite himself, Gwyndolin smiles.

Siegward seizes upon this chink in Gwyndolin’s armor. “If I may ask, what is so important that you must fly from this house with nothing in your stomach?”

Gwyndolin shakes his head, still irritated with himself. “I have pressing business to discuss with Dunstan and Yorshka, and Eira also. I must find them.”

“You must eat.” Siegward dips a ladle into the cookpot and scoops some stew into a bowl. “You wielded fearsome magic last night. That is not without cost.”

Siegward holds out the steaming bowl. 

“Keep your secrets if you like,” he says, “but I insist you nourish yourself before you go.”

Gwyndolin stares at the bowl, unmoving. Is he really being held hostage in his own kitchen?

He is about to argue when his empty stomach offers its own growling opinion. 

Siegward lifts his bushy eyebrows. “Master Gwyndolin…”

“Oh, very well.” Gwyndolin takes the bowl and sits down at the scrubbed wooden table. He cannot deny the stew smells good: rich, earthy, herbal. The sort of thing that will keep him full for the rest of the day.

The onion knight folds his arms with obvious satisfaction. “Much better. Sit, eat, dress. Then you will find Lady Yorshka on the great bridge. She is training with Lord Morgott - he came visiting from Leyndell this morning. I believe Lord Eira is assisting them. And Dunstan, I suspect, is with his lady.”

~~~

A curved sword made of blood and fire crackles through the air towards Yorshka’s throat. 

Once, she would have frozen with terror. Now her mind slows the blade’s motion enough to see the air around it shimmer with heat - enough time for her to disappear. She drops beneath the sword’s arc and vanishes in a swirl of frost. Yorshka cannot blink in and out as Gwyndolin does, but she can render herself invisible for a time: her mother’s art. Unseen, she slips between her opponent’s legs and darts down the bridge leading into Irithyll. She hears the curved sword clang against the railing behind her as she goes.

When she reappears and Morgott locates her position, he nods at her. Though his face is inscrutable beneath his crown of horns, his voice tells Yorshka all she needs to know.

“Precisely,” the Omen King calls to her.

Pride blossoms in Yorshka’s chest. Morgott does not give compliments lightly; every word of praise, however minor, is a treasure. And Yorshka knows she has earned them. She is in fine form today. Although her work has been difficult, she has learned well the  Omen King’s lessons: how to evade, disappear, and get out of harm’s way. 

She will not be so easily captured a second time. Her brother will not have to worry about her anymore.

Morgott comes towards her again, snow puffing beneath his heavy tread. “And if I approach thee thus…?”

He stops within feet of Yorshka and takes a swing, low and wide this time. Yorshka spins aside. Her skirt swirls around her. She feels the heat of Morgott’s blade through her dress, and with it comes an inner heat of satisfaction. Gone is the poor lamb Sulyvahn’s knights led away, hungry, cold, curled up and sobbing for her brother. Today she is the dragon for whom Gwyndolin named her: a legendary creature whose breath did not scorch the earth but caused it to burst into bloom.

“Just so. And thus?” Morgott continues. This time he raises his sword for an overhead strike. From this angle, the blade resembles a crooked finger.

Dost thou wish to feel thy brother’s touch once more? Sulyvahn’s soldier asked her, and presented her with a severed -

Yorshka throws herself forward, towards Morgott’s descending blow.

Before she can think, she raises the buckler on her left arm. A tiny steel disc against Morgott’s flaming sword.

A clang splits the morning stillness. Yorshka’s arm bends almost in two as Morgott’s blow collides with her buckler. This was a mistake; she doesn’t have the strength -

Then metal scrapes, and she swats Morgott’s sword aside, and the pressure is gone.

Morgott stumbles a little, astonishment and alarm flashing across his weathered face. He and Yorshka backstep away from each other. The Omen King's fingers are trembling. Is it merely the echo of impact, or the fear of what might have happened had Yorshka’s parry gone awry? 

Yorshka herself is not the least bit afraid. She should be, having done something foolish and reckless, and yet she cannot stop thinking about the finger Sulyvahn’s knight gave her. He assumed Yorshka would take it as a sign of Gwyndolin’s demise - and she would have if not for her brother’s letter, tucked into her dress close to her heart. She was gullible then. She knew nothing. It is not so now. She will never be a warrior, but at least she can take care of herself.

The flames on Morgott’s sword go out with a hiss. He does not look proud.

“What possessed thee, child?” he says in the low rumble he uses when he is displeased. “Thou knowest thou’rt not to engage with me in any way. Certainly I will not have thee endeavor to counter my blows. Such a skill is yet beyond thee.”

“Then why arm me with this buckler?” Yorshka asks. Her own words startle her. She never argues with Morgott. The memory of that severed finger must have made her fierce.

“Thou’rt not to use it yet. I mean only for thee to accustom thyself to its weight. Thou’rt fortunate I struck with less than half the force a true foe would bring to bear against thee.”

Less than half the force…? Yorshka thinks of the pressure that bent her arm a moment ago. That frightens her.

“Forgive me,” she says, head bowed. “Thy sword put me in mind of the finger Sulyvahn’s knight gave me - that which he said ‘twas Lin’s.” 

Morgott glances at his blade. Some of the hardness goes out of his face. “I see,” he says, whether or not he actually does. “Nonetheless, I must look to thy safety. I shall not instruct thee in the buckler’s use until I judge thee ready, and only with thy brother’s approval.”

“He won’t give it,” Eira says from her perch on the bridge railing. She does not look proud either: on the contrary, she seems just as concerned as Morgott. “And with good reason. Parrying is dangerous, love. I should know; I’m rubbish at it. Still…”

She glances at the Omen King.

He nods. “…thou shouldst learn...”

“…just in case,” Eira finishes. “You have to promise you’ll only do it if you have no other choice but to knock your enemy off-balance so you can get away. Otherwise, it’s not worth the risk.”

Morgott passes a hand over Yorshka’s hair. Not for the first time, she wonders what he sees when he looks at her. “‘Tis a skill to be used only at the uttermost end of need,” he reiterates. And then, quite unexpectedly: “Thou art enough, lass. Hearest thou?”

Yorshka warms from the inside out. She forgets sometimes, as she did this morning, that she is enough just as she is, and Morgott always knows when to remind her. She loves him for that.

She closes her eyes and pictures hurt and anger running off her skin like water. “I thank thee,” she says. “I needed -”

Child!

Yorshka’s head snaps around. A voice - Priscilla’s voice - slices across her consciousness. As always, it sounds as if it came from beside her, just out of her peripheral vision.

Bring thy brother not to Ariandel! There is danger here for a child of Fire!

“But why?” she whimpers. “What -”

“Child?”

This time the voice is Morgott’s. His heavy hand on Yorshka’s shoulder pulls her back to herself. She looks dizzily up at him. His one good eye is soft now.

“What aileth thee?” he asks, resting his other hand on Yorshka’s waist to steady her. 

Yorshka considers telling Morgott and Eira about the dreams that began just before Gwyndolin’s first ball, wherein Yorshka visited an attic in Ariandel. About the dragon girl who asked her to bring Gwyndolin and Dunstan to the painted world. About Priscilla’s ghost, who begged her to keep Gwyndolin away. About how those dreams have begun fissuring into her waking life. It happened just now, and last night as she sat with Eira, and many times before. Gwyndolin has noticed it, too. Yorshka will not be able to conceal the truth much longer. And if Ariandel poses her brother some danger, perhaps Morgott and Eira should know, so they can help keep him safe.

“I…” she begins. “I hear my mother -”

“Lord Morgott?”

They all turn to see Gwyndolin standing down the bridge from them, for once hooded and cloaked against the cold.

Morgott lifts a hand in greeting. “Outlander.”

Gwyndolin smiles at the irony of being called an outlander in his own city. “I am glad to find thee here. Forgive mine interruption, but I must speak with my sister.” His eyes slip from Yorshka to Eira to Morgott. “I must speak with you all.”

~~~

It is a familiar gathering, one held many times for happier purposes than this. Yorshka and Eira sit together on the rug in front of Gwyndolin’s hearth. Dunstan occupies an armchair; Elisabeth stands beside him. Morgott leans against the mantelpiece in vigilant silence.

Gwyndolin surveys each face in turn from the vantage of his own armchair. These are his allies, he thinks. His family by more than blood. Whatever might be revealed today, that will not change.

He takes a breath.

“I have gathered you here,” he says, “because I have ill tidings to impart, and I shall need thy counsel. I have reason to fear once more for the safety of our world.”

“So do I,” Dunstan mutters.

“Then wilt thou share what thou wouldst not utter after the hunt?”

The Unkindled averts his eyes and picks at the worn hem of his tunic. “You’re not going to tell them about the letter first? That would be easier to start with.”

“I spoke with Eira last night. She is resolved.”

“What letter is this?” Morgott asks, fixing his lord with a hard stare.

Eira does not so much as flinch. “Lin’s brother, we think, wants me to come to a place called Archdragon Peak for a duel.”

“Oh, is that all?” Morgott says with mock airiness. “And thou didst not think to inform me of this threat to the Elden Lord’s person?”

“We don’t know it’s a threat. It might be a friendly challenge.”

Gwyndolin grimaces. In days past, even Gwynhael’s friendliest duels with his comrades ended in cuts and broken bones. He may have become even more aggressive since.

“Whatever it may be,” Morgott pronounces, “thou wilt not answer it.”

“I will,” Eira says. “I want to bring Lin’s brother back to him.”

“Thou’rt ruled by thine heart, as ever.”

“We can talk about this later.”

Morgott folds his arms. “’Twill be a brief discussion. Unkindled, continue.”

It comforts Gwyndolin to hear Morgott and Eira bicker like this: back and forth as quick as their swordplay, both a contest of wills and a display of respect. He takes hold of that familiarity as attention turns once more to Dunstan.

The Unkindled wriggles in his chair, unused to such scrutiny. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Have out with the bad,” Gwyndolin says. He will not be able to concentrate on anything else until he knows the worst.

“All right, then.” Dunstan’s jaw works as he forms his next words. “You remember those dreams you had before we put out the flame, about the ash place at the end of the world?”

“I could hardly forget them,” Gwyndolin answers. He does not like where this is going.

“Well, now I’m having ‘em. Have been for the past few weeks.”

Ice fills Gwyndolin’s stomach. Something of his distress must show in his face, because Dunstan says, “No. Tell me you’re not having ‘em again too.”

Gwyndolin closes his eyes against nauseating dread. “I am. That is the ill news I meant to bring before this company today.”

A scoffing sound of disbelief huffs past Dunstan’s clenched teeth. He twists around to look into his wife’s face. “Are you having ‘em, Elisabeth?” 

The former Fire Keeper gives a tight nod. 

Dunstan groans and drops his face into his hands. “Then it’s real. It’s happening.” He knows, as they all do, that it is no coincidence these dreams have visited the three people who put out the First Flame.

“What’s happening?” Eira interjects. Her tone is even, but her posture is rigid and alert. “Fire can’t be coming back yet, can it?”

Dunstan shakes his head. “I don’t think these dreams are about Fire. Fire isn’t dangerous if it’s left alone. It won’t turn the world to ash any more than Dark will turn it into the Abyss. No, our dreams are about firelinking.”

“Or the consequences thereof,” Gwyndolin says with no small amount of shame.

“But you have forbidden firelinking, my lord, in the event of Fire’s return,” Elisabeth notes.

Gwyndolin stiffens at the earnest faith in her voice, knowing he must dispel it. “I have, but I shall not live forever. Those who come after me may choose not to honor my declaration.”

“But Dark is nothing to be afraid of! We know that now, and we know what happens when Fire burns too long,” Dunstan protests. A hint of desperation creeps into his voice. “Why not let it go out when it’s time?”

“’Tis simpler to cling to power, Unkindled.”

No one in the room disagrees. They all know firsthand just how tempting it is for a ruling order to prolong its existence, even to the world’s detriment.

It is Eira who breaks the silence. “Tell me more about these dreams. You used to wake up choking, Lin. Are they as real or violent as they were before you ended Fire?”

“Nay, not nearly,” Gwyndolin says too hastily. He is eager for any scrap of hope. “They are dim now, and distant.”

“It’s the same for me,” Dunstan says.

“And for me,” Elisabeth confirms. “Perhaps the renewed firelinking we see is yet distant in time.”

“Therein may lie our salvation,” Gwyndolin says.

“How?” Dunstan pushes himself out of his chair and begins to pace. His sword hand twitches at his side. “How can we stop something that might not happen until ages after we’re all dead? We can’t exactly find the people responsible and knock sense into ‘em!”

Morgott answers Dunstan’s agitation with steadiness. “If ye cannot prevent this crisis, ye must erect defenses against it.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

“The painting,” Yorshka murmurs. 

All eyes turn to her. This is the first time she has spoken since the conversation began. She goes to Gwyndolin and sits beside him on his armchair.

“A painted world is born of blood,” she explains. “With time, ’twill rot. When its life is done, it must be burned, and a new world painted from the ashes. This is known.”

“Miquella would agree,” Eira says. Her warm eyes are haunted.

Behind her, Morgott shifts just enough to give away his unease. Gwyndolin wonders if the Haligtree is blazing in his mind, and the Erdtree beside it.

Gwyndolin puts an arm around Yorshka. He needs her closeness. “But this world is not a painting, darling girl. If it should burn, we cannot make another.”

“Is that certain?” Morgott says, stroking his silver side whiskers. “Could one by some means…transcribe this world? If ’tis so, the transcription would act as a safeguard against the original’s ruin.”

Eira raises an eyebrow at him. “That sounds a bit farfetched for you.”

“So too did the Mending Rune of the Crucible, until I lay mine own hands upon it.”

“Yorshka’s right about one thing: painted worlds need to burn,” Dunstan says. He has stopped pacing now, though his sword hand is still clenched. “A man named Gael told me that. I met him in the Cleansing Chapel while I was looking for Lords of Cinder. He was praying for fire. ‘Fire for Ariandel’, he said, ‘and the ash to kindle flame.’ I’m ash. As I see it, it’s time for Ariandel to burn, and Gael wants my help to do it.”

Beside Gwyndolin, Yorshka begins to tremble.

Elisabeth lays a hand on her husband’s arm. Clearly, she is not eager for him to set off on yet another pilgrimage. “Could it be the ashes of burned Ariandel we see in our visions?”

“Nay,” Gwyndolin says flatly. “The ruins of Lothric Castle lay amidst the ashen wastes. I saw them clear. ’Tis our own world of which we dream.”

Dunstan’s shoulders sag. He looks deeply weary. “Right. But then…why did I see the ash place when I touched the scrap of painting Gael showed me?”

“Thou didst see it then?”

“That was the first time. I told you about that, didn’t I? - a few years ago, when you were talking to me and Sirris about ending Fire. If that place was the end of our world, not Ariandel, what does Gael have to do with it?”

Now Morgott turns his amber eye on Yorshka. “Child, do the people of the painting ever refuse their world’s burning, as did the Golden Order and the gods of Lordran?”

“Nay,” Yorshka says in a small voice. Gwyndolin knows she cannot be certain of this; she was very young when she fled her home.

“Then why doth Gael pray for fire?” the Omen King goes on. “One need not pray for that which is sure to come.”

“Maybe someone doesn’t want Ariandel to burn,” Eira says. “Like you didn’t want me to burn the Erdtree.”

“Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with the firelinking and the end of our world?” Dunstan demands. He begins to pace again, up and down in front of the hearth.

Gwyndolin knows what he fears: that Fire will not be allowed to flare and die according to the natural order, that the Darksign will reawaken, that humans like him will suffer and hollow and burn, all kindling, all the same. Gwyndolin fears that too. More so, he fears that someone like him - a Darkmoon child, a living prophecy of nightfall - will find themself bleeding warmth into a false sun as he did, losing themself day by day until they are as hollow as a human. That would indeed have been Gwyndolin’s fate if not for the people sitting around him.

He grips the arms of his chair to steady himself. “We shall not know unless we journey to Ariandel and speak with this man Gael.”

Yorshka flings her arms around Gwyndolin and buries her face in his shoulder. “Nay, thou must not!”

“Why, dearest one?”

“I…have had dreams also.”

“Oh, not thou as well!”

“I see my mother and a dragon girl like me. The dragon girl wisheth thee to come to Ariandel, and Dunstan with thee. My mother beseecheth thee to stay away.”

“Thy mother?”

“Her ghost.”

This is too much. The ash dreams, Gwynhael’s challenge, and now the painted world - it’s all too much. Gwyndolin looks to his friends, hoping for reassurance, but to his horror he is filled with a consuming fear that they will disappear. Is that not what the ash dreams mean? Peace is fragile, the future uncertain. Anything can be lost at any time. Perhaps the life he has lived for the past few years is itself an illusion, and he will soon wake in empty Anor Londo.

“Whatever the danger, I must…” he tries to say. Then the world tilts violently beneath him and his voice loses its way, as if he has suddenly realized he is speaking a language he does not know. Only one clear thought remains: I cannot do this again.

He squeezes his eyes shut as his head swims. He hears several voices saying his name, and he tries to grab hold of it: Lin, he is Lin, not Gwyndolin. He need not be Gwyndolin ever again. No one need be Gwyndolin ever again if he has any say in it.

He holds Yorshka’s hand until the world stops shifting. Eventually his mind and his tongue reestablish their connection.

“What is the good news?” he asks weakly, without opening his eyes.

“Oh, right.” Dunstan sounds surprised. “Did I tell you about the human settlement at Lothric Castle?”

“Long ago.” It was when Gwyndolin and Dunstan were looking for gold to make Eira a crown.

“According to Greirat, rumor is your sister’s there.”

Gwynevere? Alive?

Gwyndolin lets his head fall into Yorshka’s hair. No, this is certainly too much.

~~~

The council ends without much resolution. There are further preparations to make, further discussions to have, and no one is in a frame of mind to have them, Gwyndolin least of all. He was paler than ever and looked ready to faint by the end of it.

Dunstan spends the evening pacing around the small house he shares with Elisabeth, clenching and unclenching his fist on the hilt of his claymore. According to Gwyndolin, Gwyn did much the same thing when he felt himself at a loss. Dunstan does not like what this implies.

He cannot bear to contemplate the conclusion of today’s council: that in the distant future, someone like Gwyn will begin the firelinking anew and lead the world to ruin. The life for which he died again and again, the life so many of his human kin never got the chance to see, might be lost. That means he fought all the way to the kiln - twice! - only for his people to be reduced to accursed shadows once more.

The thought sets Dunstan buzzing, a sickening tingle beneath his skin. It is the same feeling he gets when he knows an enemy attack is coming but not how to counter it, and indeed, that is the position in which he now finds himself. How can he counter a disaster that may not strike for thousands of years? Can he counter it at all?

For now, he can only hope the painted world holds some answers. 

Dunstan’s helplessness engenders tension, curling his fingers into claws. Of all the miseries he has endured, this feeling is the worst and direst of all. To an Undead, helplessness is terminal: if unrelieved, it ends in death or hollowing. Those threats have passed, but their shadows remain. Dunstan wishes he had the ash-worm in front of him now, if only to lash out at something solid and give himself direction.

Eventually Elisabeth coaxes Dunstan to bed. There he finds himself more afraid than ever that the woman beside him will turn to ash at the slightest touch. He loves her and she is too kind to be real. 

Dunstan wonders whether he did the right thing by marrying her. On one hand, he did not want to wait. Undeath taught him that those whose lives can begin and end in the span of seconds, and for whom loss is always around the corner, cannot afford to wait. Even now, after Fire, old habits die hard.

On the other hand, Dunstan was equally, paradoxically afraid to commit himself to a life with Elisabeth. To give one’s heart is to open oneself to loss, and the pain of loss: undeath taught him that too.

He chose commitment. Now Elisabeth is carrying their first child, Dark preserve her.

All this becomes especially apparent in light of this afternoon’s discussion: so much so that when Elisabeth puts her head on Dunstan’s chest, his heart begins to race.

She notices, of course. She is twice as attuned to sound and sensation as anyone else in Irithyll.

She pushes herself off him and props herself on her elbows. One hand comes to rest on the knot of scar tissue above Dunstan’s heart, where his Darksign brand once burned.

“Speak to me, ashen one,” she says. “Tell me what is in thy mind.”

She already knows, of course. That is evident from the placement of her hand.

And that is just as well, because Dunstan does not want to talk. He is wary of sharing too much with the people closest to him: another lesson of undeath. He still blames himself for what happened to Laurentius. Back then, he did not see what harm could come of telling the good-natured pyromancer where to find the magics of Izalith. It was what Laurentius wanted more than anything, after all. Shortly afterward, Dunstan found his friend wandering the swamps of Blighttown. He knew Laurentius was hollow even before he saw the pyromancer’s withered face. His aggression gave him away. It was so very wrong. In Firelink Shrine, Laurentius never so much as spoke a harsh word.

After that, Dunstan came to understand that talking was dangerous. He stopped speaking almost altogether. It did not prevent the people around him from going hollow, but it meant he didn’t know them quite so well by the time they lost themselves. This in turn fooled him into thinking it didn’t hurt. It was only when he met Yorshka, locked in her tower prison, that he found his voice again. She brought him out of himself, as she did her brother. He could not help but speak to her here and there to break her solitude.

Dunstan knows, of course, that Elisabeth will not go hollow, nor is she fragile of spirit; she could not have snuffed the First Flame with her own hands if she were. And no doubt she shares many of Dunstan’s thoughts. She too must be sick at the thought of returning to the days of firelinking, of hollowing, of slow but certain decay, of women like her surrendering their eyes and lives to lonely duty. Even so, instinct restrains Dunstan. Best not to say too much.

He holds his silence, studying the flecks of darker gray in Elisabeth’s pale eyes and letting her stroke his hair. 

“I’m afraid, Lisbet,” he says after a while. 

She smiles at the nickname. Although Dunstan once hesitated to use it for fear of diminishing her dignity, Elisabeth loves it. She says it makes her feel real and whole.

She puts her arms around him without another word. She does not press Dunstan to speak.

Dunstan does not find sleep. He knew he would not; he can never sleep with his mind as full as it is now. He makes a valiant effort, lying very still with his eyes closed, before he gives up and slips out of bed as quietly as he can. He decides to go down to the kitchen for a drink from the water barrel.

His house is dark save for a few vases of Yorshka’s flowers, but Dunstan needs no further illumination to guide his feet. Like all humans in this new age, he sees better in darkness than he does in light, every detail crisp as fractals of frost. He pads into his small parlor aided by nothing but his own eyes.

He has taken no more than a few steps before he detects a smear of silver in his peripheral vision: a lantern is burning on a corner table, a lantern Dunstan did not put there. Before he can investigate, a slight movement alerts him to the presence of a pale figure curled up on his sofa. Once, before Dark, he would have been alarmed. Now, with his heightened vision, he knows at once he has nothing to fear.

“Lin,” he says. 

“Forgive me,” Gwyndolin says softly. “I should not have come. I intrude upon thy privacy.”

“It’s all right. Can’t say I’ve never wandered into your house uninvited.” 

Dunstan sits down on the other end of the sofa and looks hard at Gwyndolin. It’s impossible to tell how he is dressed. He is wrapped in the throws that Dunstan and Elisabeth keep by their door in case anyone comes to them in need of shelter. 

“Tell me you didn’t walk here in your shawl and nightgown,” Dunstan goes on.

“‘Twould be a lie to tell thee so,” Gwyndolin says, unabashed.

“You could’ve put on a cloak, at least.”

“It…did not occur to me.”

Dunstan sighs. It never occurs to Gwyndolin to take care of himself. It has not occurred to him since he put Anor Londo’s sun in the sky.

“I don’t want to hear you say this house is only a minute’s walk from yours. That’s not the point,” Dunstan says, and leaves it at that. Gwyndolin knows perfectly well what the point is; he and Dunstan have had this argument before. “So what brings you here in the middle of the night?”

Gwyndolin tucks his chin into the folds of his blankets. “I could not sleep.”

And what am I supposed to do about that, friend? Dunstan thinks. He has no gift for soothing troubled minds. In fact, he does not know why Gwyndolin is here at all when he could be with Yorshka, who always sets her brother at ease.

Dunstan decides he has to try. “Too much to think about?”

“Yes, but not only that. My thoughts are strange this night.”

“How so?” Dunstan asks, now wary that he might be getting in over his head.

“As we sat in counsel this afternoon, it struck me of a sudden that I was surrounded by people I love, and I became quite certain that those dear faces were as insubstantial as my sun. Surely, I thought, such a life as this cannot belong to Gwyndolin of Anor Londo.”

Gwyndolin’s voice trembles a little.

“I am much afraid,” he continues, “that this world of ours is a dream. Soon I will wake in the Darkmoon Tomb once more, commanding my Blades to strike off the ears of the guilty.” He shudders. “Was it truly I who issued such orders? By Fire, what was wrong with me?”

Gwyn was wrong with you, Dunstan thinks. 

In lieu of saying this, he reaches out and gives Gwyndolin’s drawn-up knees a push. “Seems we’re both awake and real,” he says, willing his voice to be firm but not callous. “Listen to me, Lin. You feel this way because you just got word that your brother’s alive, your sister’s alive, and, oh, one day someone might start the firelinking again and ruin everything we fought for. No surprise you’re a bit shaky.”

It does not escape Dunstan that this assessment applies to him as well. He glances over his shoulder, knowing Elisabeth is not there and wishing she were.

“No surprise at all,” Gwyndolin says, though beneath his blankets his body remains taut. “Thy pardon, Unkindled. I fear I have drawn thee from thy bed for naught.”

“You haven’t. I was already awake.” 

Silence descends. Dunstan tries desperately to think of what Elisabeth would do now.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks at last.

Gwyndolin shakes his silver head. In the dark, to Dunstan’s keen eyes, he looks very young and shy. “Wouldst thou but speak to me a while?”

“You never want me to talk to you. Are you sick?”

“Nay, Unkindled, I only…”

Gwyndolin trails off. Dunstan does not need him to finish, for in a rare moment of clarity, he recalls something Gwyndolin said about the Undead who came to the Darkmoon Tomb: talking to them, if only in ritual words, reassured him that something existed beyond his illusions. It reassured him he was still real. That is what Gwyndolin needs now, in the face of all this uncertainty: an anchor. It does not matter what Dunstan says. His voice alone will do.

Dunstan shifts position, folding his legs beneath him. “Well, every time Eira comes visiting, it gets me thinking about other worlds - not just the Lands Between, but other versions of our world. Are there other Gwyndolins and Dunstans? Maybe in one of those worlds I dragged you out of Anor Londo after we fought in your hallway and you went on adventures with me. Maybe you got poisoned in Blighttown instead of by Sulyvahn - but you were all right, because I brought the proper moss this time.”

He can feel his cheeks reddening as he speaks: this is utter nonsense. By some miracle, however, Gwyndolin takes it in the affectionate spirit in which it is intended.

The god raises a brow, smiling faintly. “The proper moss?”

“Long story. Just remember it’s the blooming moss you need, not the plain moss.”

“Very well: the blooming moss.” Gwyndolin nestles deeper into his blankets. “Go on.”

Dunstan cannot believe this is working. Gwyndolin really must be shaken if he is willing to accept this rambling as a form of comfort. 

Dunstan leans back and tries to relax. With any luck, this silly idea of his will help him get to sleep too. “I could teach you to parry Silver Knights. You’ll never be afraid of ‘em again once you know how.”

“Must I be strong for that?”

There is something wrong, something hurt, in that question. “No. You don’t need a heavy shield. You can do it in your silk gloves with a buckler if you want.”

“And what of Yorshka?”

“Of course Yorshka can come with us if she wants. We can take her to Oolacile to see your old friend Dusk. Maybe in this other world, we can get to Oolacile before it falls to the Abyss, make it so it goes back to the way it was at your ball. And you could try Dark Bead! That’s a sorcery of old Oolacile. Have you ever used it?”

“Nay. I did not partake of such heresy,” Gwyndolin murmurs without hostility. 

“Well, in this world, you do. You can use Dark sorcery, can’t you? - you told me the Darkmoon is closer to Dark than to Fire. You’d be a menace with Dark Bead. Bet you’d give the Four Kings of New Londo a proper show, and Yorshka would see how strong you are.”

Gwyndolin rests his cheek on one fist. “I like this story.”

Calling it a “story” is generous. Nonetheless, Gwyndolin’s voice is growing softer and sleepier, so Dunstan must be doing something right.

“We could take the Moonlight Greatsword from Seath,” Dunstan goes on, abandoning all attempts at realism. “Andre could make you a few copies. Let’s say, oh, I don’t know…four of ‘em.”

“How on earth am I to wield four greatswords, Unkindled?”

“With your snakes.”

Gwyndolin chuckles drowsily. “They were not so strong as thou think’st.”

“If they were anything like the snakes at Sen’s, they were plenty strong.” Then something occurs to Dunstan. “Where did they come from, by the way? Your snakes.”

The smile fades from Gwyndolin’s face. “I never knew,” he says in the flat, carefully controlled voice he uses to talk about painful things. “Perhaps I am Seath’s creature.”

“You’re not a creature, Lin.” Dunstan’s fist tightens with an unexpected flare of anger. “And why would Seath put snakes on you?”

“I was a sickly child, as I told thee. ’Twas feared I would not walk. My serpents supported me.” 

“And you think Seath gave them to you for that?”

Gwyndolin folds his arms tight beneath the blankets. “I suspect they were with me from birth, yet I prefer to think them a gift of the Paledrake. If this is so, ‘twould mean my father was desperate to aid me, for naught but desperation could compel him to submit his child to Seath’s experiments. Even a child such as I.”

For a moment, Dunstan cannot speak, so pitiful is this logic. No child should have to resort to such convoluted means to convince himself his father loves him.

He swallows a retort and reminds himself to be patient. Gwyndolin has ages of self-deprecation to undo: progress will be slow and not necessarily consistent. Dunstan knows this, yet he smolders inside to hear Gwyndolin talk about himself this way. What a change that is: a few years ago, he would not have cared one whit about a god’s fragile self-esteem.

“I saw him put his hand on your face before he died,” Dunstan says, imitating Elisabeth’s softness. He made a mistake asking about Gwyndolin’s snakes (he is still too blunt for anyone’s good), and now he must repair his error. “Whatever he was trying to tell you, it was gentle. Remember that.”

Gwyndolin answers with a hum. Not a particularly solid affirmation, but it will have to do.

And indeed, it seems Dunstan’s attempt at reassurance has worked: Gwyndolin’s body relaxes within its tartan cocoon. He lays his head on the armrest. “Instruct me in the parrying of Silver Knights,” he says.

Dunstan cannot suppress a relieved exhale. “It’s simple - at least, it’s simple to talk about. You watch the enemy’s weapon. You wait until you see it come towards you…”

It’s a ridiculous exchange. Ridiculousness is sometimes the surest weapon against hollowing. In this case, it seems to do the trick. By the time Dunstan finishes his explanation, which is not long, the only sound in the room is Gwyndolin’s soft breathing. The god is asleep.

The god is asleep.

“Oh, for Dark’s sake,” Dunstan mutters. His awkwardness returns in a rush. Having achieved his objective, he is now painfully aware of every noise he makes: every creak as he shifts his weight, every rustle of his clothing. He is not light of foot like his wife, to say the least. 

He sits there for a while, taking small, light breaths, like on the mornings when he wakes before Elisabeth and holds very still so as not to disturb her sleep. Eventually he decides he must leave a message for Gwyndolin’s household. Carrying Gwyndolin home is out of the question; he is bound to wake, light sleeper that he is, but Yorshka will be frightened if she finds her brother gone without warning.

He eases himself to his feet inch by inch - the creaking springs make him wince - and blows out the lantern Gwyndolin left on the corner table. He pulls the blankets up Gwyndolin’s shoulders, praying his body does not choose this moment to be clumsy. Then he opens and shuts his front door as quietly as he can, walks a few houses down the flower-lit street, and lets himself into Gwyndolin’s home.

The marble-floored parlor is dark and empty, which means Yorshka has convinced Eira to sleep in a bed. No easy feat: the girl disregards her own comfort almost as much as Gwyndolin does. Siegward’s snores drift up from the cellar kitchen, his favorite napping spot. 

Dunstan goes about searching for a scrap of parchment. The longer he looks, the more his spine stiffens. The part of him that is still an Unkindled insists that he does not have time for this; he should just burn his message into the nearest tabletop and get out of here before an enemy axe thuds into his back. It takes a conscious effort to listen to the other part of him, the part that just talked Gwyndolin to sleep. This is a safe place, it tells him gently. This is a friend’s house. Nothing here will hurt him.

His search takes him some time, for Gwyndolin’s house is uncluttered and clean to within an inch of its life. In the end, he finds some parchment in the kitchen. Siegward has used most of it for an inventory of the pantry; there is just enough room for what Dunstan has to say. Dunstan makes no especial effort to be quiet as he sits down at the table - a raging demon could not wake the onion knight sitting before the fire. He writes that Gwyndolin is spending the night with him and Elisabeth. Nothing is wrong. No need to worry.

Dunstan leaves the note on the mantelpiece above the parlor hearth. He trusts Yorshka will find it. Morgott has taught her to be observant.

Upon returning home, Dunstan listens for the sound of Gwyndolin’s breath. He is sometimes concerned the god’s heart will stop in his sleep. Youthful though he appears, Gwyndolin is very, very old, and his frail body has been taxed to its limit. Anor Londo’s sun. Numerous illnesses, a poisoning, a near-fatal encounter with Aldrich. Neglect of his own well-being.

Only once Dunstan has reassured himself that Gwyndolin is still breathing - he is, very slowly - does he lay down beside Elisabeth in a bed that is unfashionably plain by Irithyllian standards but luxurious to him. Only then does he put his head on his wife’s shoulder and allow himself to relax.

He will need his rest, he thinks as he drifts off at last. They all will. Many journeys lie ahead, and none of them easy.

Chapter Text

The sun is just beginning to compete with the Erdtree when Eira returns to Leyndell the next morning. At this hour, Leyndell is always more red than gold - a Crucible city, as it should be. The rising sun accentuates every scarlet vein in the Erdtree’s leaves, every red undertone in Gransax’s great bronze spear - Eira can almost hear it growl. 

The streets are empty as Eira makes her way between gold-roofed buildings. Nothing stirs save for the two heavily armored Erdtree sentinels at the gates. That is for the best. Eira wants this to be a brief visit, just long enough to prepare for the journey to Archdragon Peak. Maybe if she returns to Irithyll armed and ready, Morgott will be less inclined to offer resistance.

She smiles to herself: small chance of that. This is Morgott, after all, who once offered Eira such resistance that his own blood erupted from his body.

As she traverses a last massive root and approaches the Erdtree Sanctuary, Eira spots a pair of Crucible Knights standing guard at the doorway. Their hands are folded on their sword-hilts, alert and prayerful all at once. Their horn-helmed heads turn in Eira’s direction when she reaches the threshold, and their gauntleted fists lift to their chests in unison, a conjured horn shimmering on each arm. Eira nods to them. Their hands snap back to their weapons.

Only once she has passed the Crucible Knights does Eira realize she is holding her breath. The imposing warriors still intimidate her, no matter how many times they salute her as their lord. Old instincts die hard.

The smell of incense trails Eira across the sanctuary’s tiled foyer and up to her rooms. She hardly notices. She is still thinking about the Crucible Knights, and why they make her uneasy when Morgott does not. “Margit” killed her more times - twelve, to be exact - than all the Crucible Knights put together, yet few things content her more than to lean against his sturdy body and rest. 

Except to lean against Miquella and rest.

It is indeed Miquella she has come to see. That is not exactly who Eira finds sitting on his balcony rail.

The woman sitting there does have Miquella’s ethereal beauty and lightness. She looks like she might take flight. Like Miquella, she is a creature more of wings and wind than flesh, as Morgott would say. But there the similarities end. Her tumbling hair, white-gold and shadowed with purple, is many shades paler than Miquella’s. Her eyes are a misty gray tinged lavender by the dawn light. And even now, her draping skirt recalls the petals of the lily her abandoned body once became.

Eira pauses in the doorway. “We don’t usually see each other face to face.”

Trina turns to her and offers her a smile, shyer than Miquella’s. “I did not expect you to return so soon.” Her voice is high and soft, and so sweet that Eira wants to lay down and sleep. “I’m afraid I shall need a moment to assume my usual form.”

“Take your time. I don’t mind.”

To Eira’s understanding, Miquella and Trina are much like Marika and Radagon: two people fused together, two (sometimes conflicting) aspects of Eira’s beloved god. One a sun, the other a moon. Miquella abandoned Trina when she opposed his ascension, but in the end Eira convinced him to take his other self back into his heart. Now she safeguards the best of Miquella: his sweetness, his love. Trina is more reserved than her counterpart and does not often let Eira see her outside of dreams. That she is doing so now is a sign of trust.

She goes to the balcony and buries her face in Trina’s hair. It is wilder than Miquella’s, unbound by braids, and smells of dewy grass. 

“I love you either way,” Eira says.

Trina smiles against Eira’s brow. “Some would find this form unsettling, you know.”

“Were you dreamwalking?” Eira asks.

The answer is obvious. Trina has always traveled the realm of sleep on Miquella’s behalf, calming the Frenzied Flame. That was indeed how Eira first met her. She had made an uneasy camp near the Grand Lift of Dectus, looking out towards a tower crowned with an eye of maddening fire. That night Trina appeared to her in dreams. She was not yet forsaken then, not yet curled up in her lily, and she still had power. She turned Eira’s dreamscape to a forest hung with purple lanterns. Without explanation, asking nothing in return, she armored Eira against frenzy. The next day, Eira rode past the flaming tower unaffected by its madness.

Presently Trina nods. “I journeyed to Limgrave. I fear the flame will wander near our new tree.”

“The only frenzy I ever saw in Limgrave was in a little village on the Weeping Peninsula.”

“Aye, the poor ailing village.”

“But the peninsula is nowhere near the Cave of Knowledge.”

“’Tis too close. The flame spreads. I will take no chances with Malenia’s fate. The dear woman has waited long enough.”

Eira wraps her arm around Trina’s slender waist and feels her shudder. No one has forgotten the Haligtree burning, the day that shattered their hopes of curing Malenia and banishing the outer gods. Miquella had no choice but to set the tree aflame; scarlet rot had poisoned it to its core. With time it would have crumbled on its own. It was not easy for Miquella to start over, especially because he blamed himself for all of it. He sealed the Haligtree’s downfall when he bewitched Mohg and sent Malenia to fight Radahn.

Eira had never seen grief as fierce as Miquella’s was then, not even Morgott’s. When the Erdtree burned, the Omen King retreated inward into silent, numb despair. But Miquella was raw. On the night of the fire, Eira held him while he wept for so long that salt dried white in the corners of his eyes. She felt him break. She hadn’t felt that since Radahn died.

Now Malenia sleeps in a dream. An unalloyed needle quiets her rot while in Limgrave, in a cave beneath the Chapel of Anticipation, a new Haligtree grows. It is maturing swiftly with the aid of Morgott’s Crucible blood. It is tall enough now that it is beginning to split the chapel’s old stones, but with this surfacing comes exposure and vulnerability - hence Trina’s concern.

Eira lays a hand on Trina’s face, only to find that Trina is becoming Miquella once more. Beneath Eira’s hand her face becomes more angular, and her eyes kindle to gold.

“You’ll do it this time,” Eira says. “You’ll save your sister. There’s nothing in your way now - not even the Formless Mother.”

Not your ghosts. Not yourself.

In her mind’s eye the Haligtree burns dark red with scarlet rot. She knows without asking that Miquella sees it too.

He squeezes Eira’s hand and smiles, a signal that he wants to change the subject and put away this hurt for now.

“What brings you back to Leyndell so early?” he asks as he works braids into his hair. “Dear Lin is not ill, I trust?”

“No, but he’s running himself off his feet, as usual. He has…a lot to manage.”

“I should say so. Worms of unholy size assail his city at a moment’s notice.”

“There’s more. He has good reason to think someone’s going to start the firelinking again.”

At this, Miquella’s casual attitude evaporates. His hands fall from his hair. “He is having the ash dreams?”

“Yes. So are Dunstan and Elisabeth. Lin said the dreams are distant, so we think the firelinking might not happen for a long time.”

Miquella’s eyes flash. “If that is so, can he not let it be? He may have gone to his final rest by the time this crisis comes to pass. Let another age be troubled with it.”

This alone tells Eira how upset Miquella is that Gwyndolin must face further trials. Ordinarily, Miquella would never suggest that anyone, himself included, leave a problem for another generation to solve. 

The god sighs. “Pay me no heed. I speak in anger, not in truth. I know Lin will not avert his gaze from this new trouble, nor would I in his place. ’Tis only…”

“It’s not fair,” Eira finishes. “He’s only just found some peace and made a life. Now he won’t be able to rest until he knows the future is safe.”

She knows she speaks for Miquella as well. They both want Gwyndolin to have a quiet retirement, teaching his knights magic, leading the occasional hunt, growing flowers and holding increasingly extravagant balls. Free of tombkeeping and Fire. 

Miquella claps his hands together. “So, how can we aid him?”

Eira loves this about her husband: he never lingers long in pessimism. Like her, he drives towards answers and action. 

“Well,” she says, “I don’t think we can do much about the firelinking. That’s up to Lin. He’s going to the painted world of Ariandel to meet a man named Gael who might know something about all this. But…”

Miquella looks at her with mingled admiration and worry. He knows what Eira is about to say, in essence if not in substance.

She goes on. “You see, he’s had a letter…”

~~~

For the second time in as many days, Gwyndolin wakes without knowing where he is or how he got there.

This is not his bed; that much is certain. It has no canopy, it is not soft enough, and it is too narrow. Were Gwyndolin not curled up so tight, he would tip right off the edge.

It is very dark in this room. Gwyndolin’s bedchamber is never dark, what with all the flowers Yorshka puts in his vases and strews across his pillows. Here, the only light comes from the embers on the hearth. They glow silver with black at their edges. By their scant illumination, Gwyndolin can scarcely see his hands in front of him.

For one moment, he is frightened. 

He hears voices coming from somewhere below, and someone says “Lin”, and he starts so hard he almost falls off the sofa.

Then he remembers.

The voices belong to Dunstan and Elisabeth. They are moving around the cellar kitchen and talking to each other, his voice rough but warm, hers soft. This is their home. Gwyndolin came here last night looking for someone to talk to, someone who might understand the terrible fragility he felt in the face of yesterday’s news. And it seems Dunstan did his comforting work too well.

Gwyndolin sits up and gathers his shawl tight about him. He wonders what time it is and hopes he has not been permitted once again to sleep until eleven. Let it not be so. Today’s business is even more important than yesterday’s.

He feels for the lantern he left on the corner table. His fingers trace wood, then metal, then glass. Lantern in hand, he sinks to his knees - how ridiculous to be crawling about this way! - and approaches the hearth. There he takes out the candle and blows gently on the embers until they flare and catch the wick alight.

This done, he gives his eyes a moment to adjust. As his surroundings come into focus, he notes, as he often does, that Dunstan’s home is less formal than Gwyndolin’s own. Exposed wooden beams support the ceiling. Mortared stone, not marble, forms the fireplace. The floorboards are covered by an array of mismatched rugs. Gwyndolin lives modestly compared to most Irithyllian nobles, but the Unkindled and his wife are content with even less.

And perhaps they are right to be. Despite the rustic furnishings - or because of them - this house exudes safety. Even the darkness feels soft now that Gwyndolin is fully awake. 

(Of course the house is dark. Elisabeth cannot see, and Dunstan needs no light by which to see.)

Once Gwyndolin is certain he will not collide with some unseen object, he makes his way to the cellar steps. Down in the low stone kitchen, Dunstan and Elisabeth are sitting at the table. Slices of bread, a pot of pale jam, and a bowl of equally pallid berries are arrayed in front of them.

Gwyndolin hesitates at the base of the steps, discomfited. He has never quite gotten used to the pallor of Dark-grown food. No matter how good it tastes, it looks unappetizing.

Dunstan turns and sees his guest. “You’re alive.”

Elisabeth is more polite. “Did you find rest, Master Gwyndolin?” she asks. She still cannot bring herself to address him with the informal “thou.”

“I did - too much so, I fear. Or perhaps ’tis early yet, if this meal breaketh thy fast.”

Dunstan pulls out a third chair at the table. “Come eat. We put out enough food for you too.”

Once, Gwyndolin would have bristled at being told what to do by a human. Now all he feels is gratitude. As long as he lives, he will never tire of being included. He supposes he must treasure gestures like this while he can: he will not find such gentleness in Ariandel.

Dunstan offers a welcome distraction from such thoughts. As Gwyndolin sits down, the Unkindled points a fork at him and says, “I forgot to ask you something last night. Did you know about the titanite demon in Anor Londo?”

“Certainly. It served as raw materials for our smith.”

Dunstan blinks at him once, then starts to grin. “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

Elisabeth, too, is smiling. “Surely not.”

“I don’t know,” Dunstan muses. “Me, I opened the door, took one look, and shut it again - but the giant blacksmith? If anyone stood a chance of going in there and carving off some titanite, it’d be him.”

In spite of Ariandel and the letter and the ash dreams, Gwyndolin laughs. 

“I jest, Unkindled! ’Twas said the demon arose from a slab left behind by the god of forge and anvil. My Blades once endeavored to slay it, but found the chapel in which it lurked far too small to do battle. Or so said my knightess. I witnessed none of this myself, for I…rarely left my father’s tomb.”

Absurdly, Gwyndolin wishes he had come up to battle the demon. The fight might have helped him set himself free. It might have led him, sooner rather than late, to mornings like this one, sharing a meal with people he loves. In that case, it would have been worthwhile.

He cannot avoid the demon facing him now, however. He must fight: not for himself, but for the future. So the children of distant ages can have mornings like this too.

~~~

“Morgott will not like this.”

Eira smirks. “He never does.”

“Only because he cares for you in his way, consort mine.”

“He just doesn’t want to have to find another Elden Lord if I die.”

“You do not believe that.”

Eira thinks of the genuine relief on Morgott’s face when she awoke from the conflict with the Formless Mother. She thinks of how he taught her constellations on their wanderings. 

She shakes her head. “No.”

Only then does she see the tightness in Miquella’s face. Too late, she remembers how he hates to hear her speak so lightly of her own death. He’s lost enough people already.

She squeezes his hands to reassure him but does not waver. “You’re not going to stop me from going to Archdragon Peak, are you?”

Miquella looks down at their clasped hands. “No. I know better than to try. But I must urge you not to go alone. Thy battle with Aldrich… I would not see thee draw so near to death again.”

Miquella’s strongest displays of emotion are sometimes the subtlest. This one - his accidental use of “thee” - betrays the depth of his anxiety. Miquella rejected that older form of speech, the speech of the Golden Order, when he abandoned fundamentalism. He only uses it on significant occasions, which this is not. That means worry made him slip.

Eira softens. “Love…”

“Miquella is correct.”

They both turn to see Morgott duck through the doorway. He spares one reverent look at the Erdtree’s radiant boughs, hanging just beyond the balcony, before sitting down with his back to the wall. He folds his tail around him. He is ready for a long fight.

Indignation renders Eira speechless. Did Morgott follow her here from Irithyll?

The Omen King remains undaunted.

“Thou shalt not journey alone,” he states. “I shall accompany thee to the land of dragons, or thou shalt not go at all.”

~~~

Fortified by his meal, Gwyndolin finds his mind clearer and calmer than it was last night. He knows what he must do, and he is glad of that. He does not like to be frightened and shaky, as he was when he curled up on Dunstan’s sofa.

He begins with the simplest of his tasks: dispatching someone to find Gwynevere. He cannot be in Ariandel and Lothric at the same time. Much as he would like to go after his sister himself - and his brother, for that matter - he must prioritize the world’s future. His first duty is to resolve the threat of firelinking. If Gwynevere has indeed returned to Lothric Castle as the rumors suggest, Gwyndolin will have to wait to see her.

Fortunately, he knows who to send in his stead.

He returns home to dress and say good morning to Yorshka. Then, wearing a warm tunic and cloak he borrowed from Miquella - the same he wore to watch the Haligtree burn and fight the soul of Cinder - he sets off through Irithyll.

The morning is calm, with sparse flakes of snow speckling the glowing moss and flowers on every structure. Irithyll is lovely in its peace.

What, Gwyndolin wonders, will his brother and sister think of his garden city? Gwynevere in particular was always afraid of the dark. Gwyndolin maintained Anor Londo’s sun in part for her. In case she returned home, he did not want her to find the place shrouded in gloom.

He resolves to think only good thoughts this morning. To let himself dream, as Eira once advised.

Yes, his siblings will be proud of him, even Gwynevere. Whatever her fears, she will be glad to see that her brother is free and real at last. Gwyndolin could not bring himself to run away with her when she married Flann, but in the end he found the joy she wished for him. He will teach her that night is beautiful, and he will show Gwynhael how strong he has become in his own way, and they will all get to know each other anew.

By now he has reached his cathedral. He pictures the magic his apprentices worked here for his first ball, transforming the square into Oolacile’s golden woods. He longs for the past, when a ball was his greatest challenge, and for the future, when he can dance alongside his siblings as he never did in Anor Londo.

He enters the Darkmoon barracks adjacent to the cathedral, passing through the armory and into the long, low bunkhouse. It is empty now, yet traces of its occupants remain. Even had he never set foot in this building before, Gwyndolin would be able to guess who sleeps where based on the state of the bedclothes. They are remarkably reflective of his knights’ personalities: many neat, some rumpled, and one in utter chaos. Gwyndolin will have to address the girl responsible for that last one. Again.

He walks between the two rows of bunks, glancing with affection at the personal effects his knights have hung on the bedposts. Furled sorcery scrolls for later study. Stone charms so worn they have lost their features. Colorful scarves and hair ornaments. Bits of youth.

Once, this place was austere, as much of Irithyll was before Gwyndolin became Lin. Now it is full of life. Gwyndolin has spent many happy nights here, filled with rambling conversation and laughter. He can almost hear the echoes.

Silently, he asks his old birds - those who died in Sulyvahn’s coup - to watch over the new.

Begrudge them not their lives. They do me such good.

Outside, his cathedral clock tolls nine. That means the four knights on moonlight duty in Anor Londo will soon return from their watch.

Gwyndolin chooses a bunk at the end of the row and sits down to await the changing of the guard.

~~~

Most of Gwyndolin’s knights dislike moonlight duty. They understand its necessity, but they grumble good-naturedly about it when their captain isn’t listening.

Not Sirris.

She has no right to complain. After all, her captain sustained Anor Londo’s sun for ages, alone. Moonlight duty, conducted by four people in shifts not exceeding eight hours, is nothing compared to that.

Besides, Sirris likes it. Especially on days like this, when the mountain air is still and Anor Londo’s stones seem to disappear beneath her feet. Her body weighs nothing. She can pretend she is part of the moonlight she is making.

As tiring as it can be to sustain Irithyll’s illusory moonlight for hours on end, it affords Sirris the perfect opportunity to clear her mind. To give herself to something greater and be affirmed by it, not diminished.

To serve where her fallen comrades no longer can.

She feels her focus waver and readjusts her grip on her whitebark catalyst. She resists the urge to open her eyes and make sure the illusion is still stable. Of course it is. Whatever Sirris’s misgivings about their maturity, the three knights beside her are skilled sorcerers. They will not let the moon go out.

Sirris wishes the weather weren’t quite so good today. There is no wind or ice to distract her from her thoughts. She needs a distraction, for the guilt she carries with her like a part of her armor is always sharpest when Eira comes visiting. Every time she looks upon the Elden Lord’s fearless smile, she remembers that it was a stranger, not any of the Darkmoon Blades, who saved Gwyndolin from Aldrich.

Because the Darkmoon Blades were dead.

And Sirris, their sole survivor, ran away.

She survived by running away.

She tells herself she only followed Gwyndolin’s final order - “Fly, my birds” - before Sulyvahn led him off. She tells herself she did not abandon her duties. Did she not hunt Rosaria’s Fingers in the name of the moon?

But the fact remains: when she met Dunstan in Firelink Shrine, she introduced herself as a former servant of the divinity. Former, because she believed the divinity in question was dead.

She should have made certain of it, returned to Irithyll and looked for Gwyndolin and Yorshka and given her life as her fellows did. It was the least she could do to pay for her cowardice and her grandfather’s -

“Sirris.”

She comes back to herself to tolling bells and pain in her hands. She is clutching her catalyst so tight the white bark is digging into her skin. Such an indecent display of weakness, and in front of three junior knights, too!

She forces herself to relax and looks down at the slender hand on her arm. It belongs to Cecily, the knight standing on her right. It must have been he who spoke her name.

“Nine bells,” the young man adds. “Our watch is done. Are you quite all right, ma’am?”

Sirris hardly hears him. All she can think is how much he looks like Gwyndolin, delicate and fair, with his hand on her arm just as Gwyndolin’s was when Sulyvahn came to take him away. Her lord was too weak with poison to stand unaided. She was the last person Gwyndolin touched before his ordeal began - and she ran.

Sirris shrugs off Cecily’s hand. “Fine.”

Without another word, she tucks her catalyst into her waistband and leaves Anor Londo’s steps.

She walks back to the lift and down through Gwyndolin’s cathedral without truly seeing. The four knights who have come to take the next moonlight watch pass her unnoticed. All she wants to do is get into her bunk and sleep. She’s been up all night on duty, and she is tired and unhappy with herself. Perhaps a good rest will set her right.

All thoughts of sleep flee away, however, when she enters the bunkhouse to find Gwyndolin sitting on the bed across the aisle from hers, toying with the hem of his cloak. Even dressed in practical cold-weather clothing, he is so beautiful that Sirris’s heart climbs into her throat. 

He is not yours, she reminds herself. He does not feel as you do.

“Sir.” Sirris presses her fist to her chest and bends the knee, even though Gwyndolin no longer requires his knights to kneel for the Darkmoon salute.

Gwyndolin releases her from the gesture with a wave of his hand. “I warrant no such deference today, for I fear I must keep thee from thy needed rest. Please, sit.”

Sirris rises with her eyes still downcast and goes to her bunk. When she sits down, her knees nearly touch Gwyndolin’s. She has not been so close to him since that first ball, when he honored her with a dance beneath Oolacile’s boughs. It takes all her discipline to control her breathing.

“What would you have of me, my lo - captain?” she asks, wincing a little when she nearly uses the wrong honorific. Gwyndolin prefers not to be called a lord; this is one way he distances himself from his father and his past. Sirris knows this, yet to her it feels disrespectful to address Gwyndolin as a mere knight captain. He is her god, Fire or no Fire.

If Gwyndolin notices her error - and he must; nothing escapes him - he makes no comment. “Thou’rt weary from thy watch,” he says, “so I shall not detain thee long. Permit me to speak plainly: I have a task for thee.”

Sirris sits up straighter. Her nerves begin to buzz with anticipation. “I am eager to serve.”

Gwyndolin smiles a little sadly. Sirris wonders if he can see the guilt in her heart.

“Greirat bringeth word - take that as thou wilt - that my sister is returned to Lothric Castle. I wish thee to pursue this rumor. If ’tis true, and if it be Gwynevere’s will, bring her home to me.”

Sirris feels herself light up inside. She cannot conceal a sharp intake of breath. This is too much to take in: the Princess of Sunlight may be alive, and if she is, Sirris is tasked with bringing her to Irithyll. To entrust her with such an important mission… Gwyndolin might as well have handed her the sun! Sirris’s highest prerogative is to keep her captain safe and happy, and this is a golden opportunity to do both. 

Flustered, elated, she loses her bearing. “Sir…I know not what to say. I am unworthy.”

“Not at all. Thou’rt the most senior of my knights.”

And then Sirris remembers: she is the most senior only because all her more experienced comrades are dead.

What if she cannot bring Gwynevere home? Before Sulyvahn’s coup, she was neither the strongest nor most skilled of the Darkmoon Blades. It was only by chance that she ended up standing beside Gwyndolin, holding his arm, on the night Sulyvahn took him captive. Others merited that position far more than she.

She must try. She has a debt to pay.

“Will you journey with me, sir?” she asks, and immediately regrets it. That was inelegant and inappropriate.

Gwyndolin looks down at his cloak. “Nay, I have…business in Ariandel.”

“The painted world?” Sirris’s spine stiffens. What business could Gwyndolin have in that forsaken, perilous place?

“The paintings burn when their lives are spent,” Gwyndolin explains. “We believe ’tis time for Ariandel’s burning. My sister, I do not doubt, will wish to witness it. I must be with her.”

This mutes the edge of Sirris’s anxiety with sorrow. “Poor Lady Yorshka,” she murmurs. The girl saw the First Flame go out; now she will see her birthplace burn as well. It’s too much for such a gentle soul to bear. “You are kind to stand beside her. She will take comfort in your presence. Will you require an escort?”

“I shall take the Unkindled with me. I trust in his sword.”

Disturbed as she is to know that her captain is venturing into a dangerous place beyond her sight, Sirris cannot disagree about Dunstan. The Unkindled is strong and true of heart. It was only with his help that she put an end to her grandfather’s madness.

“Very well, sir. I am glad you will not be alone,” Sirris says. She does not allow herself to add, even in the silence of her thoughts, Do not disappear again. I cannot bear it.

“Nor shalt thou be alone on thine own journey. Amalie shall accompany thee.”

Sirris’s stomach drops. She tries to think what she has done wrong of late, for surely this is a punishment. Amalie is the youngest of Gwyndolin’s new birds, a tiny ball of chaos. She has never once displayed the Darkmoon tenets of precision, elegance, and restraint. She cannot stand still and silent through a moonlight watch. She wields her magic with a child’s indiscriminate, overeager hand, and she has no end of absurd ideas. When the Darkmoon Blades cast their illusory moon for the first time, it was she who decided they should do so from the highest tower in Anor Londo - “to be closer to the heavens.” More absurd still was that Gwyndolin agreed with her, and proceeded to lead all his birds on a precarious trek up icy buttresses in the dark.

Gwyndolin was never so reckless before he became Lin. Sometimes, in blasphemous moments, Sirris wonders if the change was entirely good for him.

Her captain is eyeing her closely. He tilts his head, silvery hair slipping from behind his ear. “This is not to thy liking.”

A statement, not a question. Gwyndolin knows full well how Sirris feels about Amalie.

“Sir, the girl is…” To her great shame, Sirris finds she can no longer contain herself. She flings out an arm, gesturing at the jumbled bedclothes on Amalie’s bunk. “She cannot be troubled to make her bed! Can she truly be trusted with Princess Gwynevere’s safety? Can she be trusted with yours?”

Can I? adds a small, nasty voice in Sirris’s mind.

“She acquitted herself well during the Aldrich Plague,” Gwyndolin notes steadily. “A disorderly youth she may be for now - she will grow. She is also gifted in both sorcery and pyromancy. She will make thee a good companion on the road.”

“I need no companion!” Sirris has already committed an egregious breach of etiquette by questioning Gwyndolin’s decisions; why not abandon all propriety?

“I know thy strength. Thy swift defense saved me in the hunt two nights past. Nonetheless, this world is not safe…”

“I have traveled alone many times. I can look after myself!”

“…and I will not see thee come to harm.”

This stops Sirris dead. Only now does she realize she is speaking far too loudly - what is wrong with her today? Gwyndolin’s eyes are on her, at once soft and piercing. She feels winded.

“I do not ask thee to make a bosom friend of Amalie,” Gwyndolin says with cool finality. “But I will not have discord in my ranks. Whatever ill feeling lieth between you, put it to rest on this journey.”

Words fail Sirris. What can she say? Her captain has issued an order. She has a debt. That is that.

Then Gwyndolin rests his hand on hers, as he did when he handed himself over to Sulyvahn, and Sirris breaks. 

There is only one answer she can give.

~~~

Yorshka considers her reflection.

The young woman in the mirror wears her hair in a braid and her spear across her back. She is dressed in the combat leathers Eira gave her: unlovely but sturdy, hugging her arms and legs tight, reinforced with metal across the chest. And her face is sharper than it used to be, no longer the face of a credulous child.

Only her eyes betray that Yorshka is still herself. They are still earnest and sweet. And just now, they are wet. 

Is this, she wonders, the sort of person who can journey through Ariandel and face whatever danger awaits her brother?

Ariandel is the source of the wetness on her cheeks. Just now, while she was getting dressed to spar with Eira and Morgott, she had another dream - or rather, a waking vision. She saw her room transform into that familiar attic, only this time it was burning. Gwyndolin and Dunstan stood amidst the flames, behind the dragon girl and her easel. 

She wishes Eira and Morgott would come back from Leyndell (Morgott said they needed to have an argument). Training might help her block out the vision’s terrible truth.

Instead, Gwyndolin comes to see her while her face is still damp with tears. Yorshka knows what he is here to say. The vision was clear.

He will go to Ariandel. Yorshka cannot stop him.

In that case, there is only one thing she can do.

Gwyndolin is in a purposeful mood today, already speaking as he crosses Yorshka’s room. “I must tell thee -” Then he catches sight of her wet face and stops. “Oh, my darling. What is it?”

“Thou wilt go,” she says. “I know it.”

Gwyndolin hesitates. “…Yes. I must.”

“I have seen it.”

“Seen…?” Concern flickers in Gwyndolin’s eyes. He takes Yorshka’s hands in his own, which are icy from his walk back to the house.

Yorshka worries about things like this. It seems to take Gwyndolin longer to get warm lately, and he breathes so slowly when he sleeps. How will he fare in Ariandel’s climate? It is even harsher than Irithyll’s.

Gwyndolin runs a hand over Yorshka’s hair. “My poor dear girl. Would that I could take these troubles from thee.”

“Let me go with thee! I will keep -” 

Yorshka stops herself, because of course she cannot keep Gwyndolin safe. Morgott taught her to evade and escape, not to kill. 

He also taught her that strength of arms is not the only kind of strength. Were he here now, he would tell Yorshka to find a use for her own gifts rather than wishing for what she doesn’t have.

“I have seen the end of Fire,” she says, thinking aloud. “I know the coming of a new world is not to be feared. Perhaps I might speak this counsel unto the governors of Ariandel, should they fear to burn their world.”

Gwyndolin does not argue, though he looks like he wants to. Yorshka senses he knew she would beg to go with him and had already resigned himself to it when he came to her door.

He pulls Yorshka close and rests his cold cheek against her hair. “Will it distress thee to see thine home burn?”

“’Twill.”

At least, it will distress her to see one particular part of it burn: her mother’s tower. She was so young when she fled Ariamis that she has only the vaguest, most vestigial love for it, but Priscilla's tower - she cherishes every stone of that place. That was her home. That was where her mother died and Yorshka’s life changed forever. When it burns, Yorshka’s last ties to the painted world will be severed.

That thought leaves her cold. She shivers.

Gwyndolin tightens his hold. “Will nothing I say dissuade thee? I cannot bear to see thee hurt.”

Yorshka shakes her head against his chest. If he is indeed in danger, she wants to be with him when it comes. The worst will be more endurable than not knowing what has become of her brother. That was Sulyvahn’s method of torture, the cruelest he could have chosen for her.

Gwyndolin draws back to look Yorshka in the eyes with his firmest, most serious look.

“Ariandel is not safe. Thou must stay close to me and the Unkindled, hearest thou?”

“That is where I most love to be,” Yorshka says. She means it with all her heart. She also knows it will melt whatever remains of her brother’s resistance.

And it does. “Very well,” Gwyndolin says, touching Yorshka’s cheek in a helpless sort of way. 

She sees for the first time that he is frightened, and she loves him for being so brave in spite of it. She allows herself to consider that in her latest vision, Gwyndolin and Dunstan were alive and apparently unharmed. Might that be a good sign?

Yorshka tries for reassurance. “We must be like Lord Miquella now,” she said, “and burn a world so another may grow.”

Gwyndolin sighs, such a weary sound. 

“Miquella was foresighted indeed.”

Chapter Text

The next days’ preparations are easy. They have all been through this before. They all have their rituals.

The lords of Leyndell hold their traditional argument, much like the one they had before Eira went to face Aldrich. It goes something like this:

Miquella claims he should be the one to accompany Eira to Archdragon Peak. Since he cannot leave the Lands Between while his body houses the Elden Ring, he would have to go as a projection like “Margit”, and would thus be in no physical danger. 

Morgott counters that while this is true, he is a far more experienced warrior than Miquella.

Miquella demands to know if this implies he cannot protect his own consort.

Eira interjects that she does not need protecting. In fact, she should be the one protecting Miquella.

Morgott reminds her yet again that in this age of the Crucible, grace will not restore her after death.

Sobered by this, Miquella concedes that perhaps Morgott should go with Eira after all. She will be safest under the Omen King’s watch.

In Irithyll, Yorshka checks on her flowers. They are still growing in luminous profusion beneath the bridge leading into the city, fed by water from the moat. Madoc trots out of the woods to meet her as she makes her assessments. Yorshka hugs her brother’s battle-wolf goodbye, her face buried in his shaggy fur. She wants to wear his scent like a talisman. Madoc keeps Gwyndolin safe; surely it will bring good fortune to smell like him.

Later, Yorshka has one last training session with Morgott in which he pushes her to the limit, testing her evasion with every attack pattern he can think of, some of which he has never showed her before. At the end, he takes her by the shoulders and makes her promise not to engage with any enemies that might approach her. Yorshka slips her buckler shield into her satchel anyway. It might not be much use on her arm, but it’s no use at all sitting under her bed. At the very least, it might bring her luck, like Madoc’s scent.

She asks Gwyndolin more than once if he really must go on this journey, despite the danger. His answer is always a grave, “I must.” In turn, Gwyndolin asks her if she is certain about going along, if this is another misguided attempt to be “of use” to him, if she is frightened. She is frightened, but she is also certain.

Gwyndolin finds himself standing in the Darkmoon Tomb for reasons he cannot explain. He tells his father he is going on a quest to protect the world from future firelinking. The words are only a little defiant. More than defiance, they bespeak a hope that somehow, in whatever realm lies beyond death, Gwyn has made peace with Dark and is no longer afraid.

Dusntan holds Elisabeth for a long time. They are silent, just breathing together. He rests a hand on her belly, which is still mostly flat. He tells himself that if he is ever to feel a heartbeat or a kick, much less see the child’s face, he must return home. If that isn’t an inducement to be cautious, he doesn’t know what is.

Elisabeth leans against him so her lips are almost touching Dunstan’s ear. “Hear thou my voice always.”

Her breath whispers through Dunstan’s hair. He hears in it all the things Elisabeth did not say aloud: Think of me when thou’rt inclined to be rash. Think of me when thou’rt afraid or in darkness through which thou canst not see. Think of me and know I think of thee.

Somewhere amidst all this, they observe the practicalities. They pack food and water and warm clothes, polish their weapons, sharpen arrowheads, seal their boots against snow and wet. 

At the last minute, it occurs to Dunstan that he has not showed Eira the secret gesture to open the way to Archdragon Peak.

“You just sit down, cross your legs, and fold your hands in your lap,” he tells her. “I think you have to be facing Archdragon Peak for it to work. I did it in Irithyll Dungeon, but it would probably work from the steps of Anor Londo. You can see the peak from there.”

“Is there something wrong with the dungeon?” Eira asks. “Enemies?”

Dunstan goes cold at the memory. “Not anymore,” he says, “but some things don’t come clean.” He shakes himself and adds, “Place is a bloody maze anyway.”

~~~

When all is ready, Gwyndolin, Dunstan, and Yorshka gather in Gwyndolin’s sitting room. It does not escape them that this was how they began the final stage of their quest to put out the flame.

Dunstan produces a filthy strip of cloth and dangles it from his fingertips. He is afraid it will bite him if he brings it closer than arm’s length.

Gwyndolin eyes it skeptically. “What is it?”

“Scrap of Ariandel.”

“Surely not. ’Tis much too small.”

Dunstan puts a hand behind his head, cheeks warming. “Gael has the rest of it. When I first touched it in the Cleansing Chapel, it tried to pull me in, I pulled back, and…it tore.”

“Is it yet of any use?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” He shifts his weight, grimaces. “I don’t like this, Lin. I don’t mind saying so.”

The object in his hand is not like a homeward bone. Homeward bones are familiar, native to the Undead; the force in this scrap of cloth is foreign. And insistent.

Judging from Gwyndolin’s tight lips, he doesn’t like it either. He looks sturdier than usual today - finally dressed for the weather in a fur-lined cloak and quilted tunic, gloves buckled over his sleeves, armed with bow and catalyst - yet Dunstan senses an undercurrent of fear and fragility. The god must be worried about what will happen if his quest should fail, and about what perils await him in Ariandel. The painted world is unknown territory for him, a land of the banished and forsaken who will not be kind to a child of Gwyn.

The stakes are no lower for Dunstan. If they are all wrong and there is no answer to the threat of firelinking in Ariandel or in Gael, it will be Dunstan’s human kinfolk who suffer first. 

The three of them stand looking at the tattered cloth for a long, heavy moment. Such a plain thing, yet it carries such weight. Dunstan felt the same way when he held the coiled sword.

“Once we touch this,” Dunstan warns, “there’s no going back until we do what needs to be done. I don’t think it’ll give us a choice.”

It is Yorshka, silent until now, who moves first.

“Our choice is made,” she says, with a hard, meaningful look at her brother.

“Dearest one,” Gwyndolin says, placating, “I would not go to Ariandel if I thought -”

Yorshka reaches for the scrap. Her hand sinks through it, into it, in a white flash. Gwyndolin hardly hesitates before plunging his own hand into the spreading pool of light. Dunstan can only follow.

The light tugs. It pulls at him with such force that it seems it must be made of wind or raging water, but no, it is only light, only force, so bright he can no longer see his companions’ faces, and it is going to pull his arm from his socket -

Then nothing.

Then dark. Then cold. And a sweet smell.

~~~

“Did the captain tell you?”

Amalie’s voice, her lowborn accent even more pronounced than Dunstan’s. High-pitched and too excited even as a whisper.

“About Lady Gwynevere,” she clarifies, as if she thinks Sirris has misunderstood rather than simply ignored her.

It is dark in the barracks, and the rest of the Darkmoon Knights are asleep. Sirris has no intention of whispering secrets across the space between her bunk and Amalie’s like a schoolgirl. 

“He did,” Sirris says, and rolls over. 

She does not add Of course he did, because that would be petty and arrogant. And also untrue. There is no “of course” about it. Gwyndolin could just as easily have entrusted Gwynevere’s homecoming to someone else.

Amalie is undeterred. Her penchant for chatter is like a battering ram: once she starts talking, she smashes through any obstacle in her path.

“Lady Gwynevere! Can you believe it? Did you ever meet her? Is she as beautiful as the painting in the captain’s house?”

“I do not know. Her Highness did not dwell in Irithyll, but in Lothric Kingdom as its queen.”

Amalie flops onto her back and sigh happily.

“Why us?” she asks. “Or why me, I mean. Of course the captain would send you. I’m nothing, but you, you’re a knight’s granddaughter, aren’t you?”

Sirris stiffens beneath her blankets. Who told Amalie that? Does she know Hodrick’s name? Does she know what Hodrick did - the shame he brought upon his family?

She holds her breath, because if she does not, it will shake and Amalie will know how rattled she is.

But the girl just sighs contentedly again and plows on. “Lady Gwynevere must be special if the captain loves her so much. Kind and beautiful. What do you think she’d be doing in a human settlement at Lothric Castle, though? Why wouldn’t she come here? She must know her brother is in Irithyll; you can see our moonlight from a long way away -”

“Amalie.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Do not ruin this.”

A few seconds’ pause - a record for Amalie. Then a reply, scarcely chastened: “I won’t, ma’am. I’ll do my best. If we could handle all those Aldriches, we can handle anything we meet on the road.”

We. Amalie has taken it for granted that she and Sirris are already a unit, as Gwyndolin wants them to be, when what they really are is a senior knight and an overeager child. Night and day.

Sirris turns over and looks at Amalie. With her dark-sight, she can see the spray of freckles across the girl’s cheeks and nose, and the excited glitter in her eyes.

“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” Amalie repeats. “Count on me.”

That is the last thing I will do. Forgive me, my lord, but this time you ask too much of me.

“You can begin by making your bed on the morrow,” Sirris says.

Amalie chuckles. “Yes, ma’am.”

She nestles back down in her blankets and tilts her head to one side. She appears to fall straight into slumber, a luxury of those who have no cares and see naught but adventure. 

Sirris pulls her own blankets tight and forces herself to unclench her jaw. She needs rest. This is going to be a long journey.

~~~

Gwyndolin’s breathing echoes. 

That is how he knows he is somewhere, and not in the nothingness between somewheres. For a sound to echo, it must rebound off a solid object.

With this logical analysis, everything else snaps into focus. The rocky walls of a cave or tunnel. Animal bones crunching underfoot. A sickly sweet smell. And a soft snuffling sound just behind Gwyndolin that brings his hand to the catalyst at his belt.

All three of them - for Dunstan and Yorshka have also entered this new reality - wheel around to face the source of the sound. Silver flame is already crackling in Dunstan’s left hand.

The great threat is a shriveled corvian lying in a corner. His feathers have receded from much of his body, exposing a head that appears more reptilian than avian in its nakedness. His eyes bulge behind third lids. He seems to be sleeping.

Gwyndolin and his companions glance at each other, then release their weapons. They all need to calm down. Excessive nerves will avail them nothing.

In fact, far more concerning to Gwyndolin than the wretched creature himself is the substance on which he is lying. It is reddish, spongy, and speckled with fleshy growths. They might be maggots or eggs or mushrooms. Gwyndolin prays for the latter and resists the urge to cover his mouth. 

Whatever it is, it bodes ill. Images of the rotted Haligtree lodge themselves in Gwyndolin’s mind and will not be dismissed.

Already he regrets allowing Yorshka to come here. He wonders what he has gotten her into and what she is about to see. It might be better to send her home, if that is still possible at this juncture.

Before Gwyndolin can say anything to this effect, Yorshka approaches the corvian. 

“Art thou wounded?” she asks in her gentlest healer’s voice.

To Gwyndolin’s faint disgust, she rests her hand on the creature’s bony one. Gwyndolin reminds himself that Yorshka was born in the painted world and is accustomed to its strangeness as he is not. Her heart is more generous than his, too.

The corvian mumbles himself awake and blinks open huge, cloudy eyes. 

“Ahh, a dragon child…just like that other,” he croaks. He reaches towards Yorshka’s face with reverence. “You are home, dear lady. Whatever terrible things you may have seen in the world beyond, you are safe in this gentle place.”

Yorshka shakes her head. “Nay, I am much loved in that world. Behind me standeth my brother, who claimed me and raised me as his own.”

The corvian’s gaze turns on Gwyndolin, who cannot bring himself to speak. This creature repels him, not because of his appearance but rather what it represents: decay and degradation. Gwyndolin knew these things all too well in his own world, and he has no desire to confront them again here. He marvels that Yorshka, who cannot abide suffering, can bear to be in the corvian’s presence.

But though her blue eyes are indeed liquid with sorrow, she does not let go of the corvian’s hand. Gwyndolin is at once anxious and proud.

“A dragon child, a Fire child, and ash,” the corvian muses. “How curious. Well, you may all rest here. Find yourselves a sweetly rotting bed to lie upon.”

“Does he smell Gwyn’s soul in you?” Dunstan mutters, voice tense.

Gwyndolin hardly hears him. His eyes are fixed on Yorshka’s face, which has suddenly tightened. He knows what she is thinking, for it is also in his mind: they were right. Gael had good reason to pray for fire. The signs of Ariandel’s deterioration are already evident. It is time for the painting to burn. Though Yorshka may consider this a necessary, sacred act, that will not make it easier for her. It is still a loss.

“We cannot,” she says. “We have a purpose in this place. Nonetheless, I thank thee.”

She takes her white-and-gold chime from her waistband and rings it once. The corvian’s ravaged face relaxes back into sleep.

Watching his sister kneel there in unfeigned, unfaltering compassion, Gwyndolin understands why the people of Irithyll consider her a saint.

When Yorshka straightens up, Gwyndolin draws her to him with a hand on her arm. “Art thou certain of this course?” he asks her for the hundredth time in the past few days. “Now more than ever I sense this journey will prove distressing for thee. I mislike the words and condition of this corvian.”

Yorshka glances over her shoulder at the little pile of rot. “As do I, and thus I must stay. Were my mother yet the painting’s guardian, I know she would see an end to this decay. Now I…” Her breath catches. “…stand in her place.”

Gwyndolin’s heart aches for her. Rarely has he seen more of his own dutiful self in Yorshka than he does now. Now is the time to tell her the things Gwyn never told him: that duty is not all, that Yorshka need not undertake it before she is ready, that surely Priscilla would not want her daughter to endanger herself.

But Yorshka has already hiked up the satchel on her back and turned purposefully towards the tunnel’s mouth.

Gwyndolin looks to Dunstan for assistance.

“I don’t like this one bit,” the Unkindled says. His gaze has not left the corvian on his rotting bed. “We’ve only been here five minutes, and already it feels like when I got to Lothric Castle and saw the sun dripping out of the sky. Gael was right; this world is ending as sure as ours was. And if the people here are anything like the people at home, they’re not going to like us lighting the place on fire, even if it is falling apart.”

Yorshka’s warnings flit through Gwyndolin’s mind: there is danger here for a child of Fire. No doubt there is. But there is no choice.

“If by doing so we learn how we may shield our own world from firelinking,” he says, “then we must.”

Dunstan sighs. “I don’t see what one has to do with the other, Lin.”

“Nor do I,” Gwyndolin admits, “yet I trust in my sister. The dragon child of which she dreamt did not call us here for naught. There may yet be greater purpose in this than Ariandel’s burning.”

Before his own doubts can overtake him, Gwyndolin goes to Yorshka’s side. She is standing at the entrance of the tunnel, looking out into the brightness.

“Stay close to me,” he reminds her.

Together they step out into the white winter light.

~~~

There is a bonfire just outside the tunnel. It sits in the snow, permanent as the rocks around it. That is the journey’s first surprise.

The second surprise is that this bonfire burns orange and red, whereas all fire in dark Lothric has faded to silver and black. From this Dunstan guesses there is fire in Ariandel, which leads him to the unwelcome but unsurprising conclusion that someone is keeping it at bay. 

A tale as old as time. Gwyn, inverted. That’s all Dunstan needs to know.

Gwyndolin, on the other hand, is not satisfied with simple explanations. He circles the little flame, scrutinizing it from every angle, heedless of the wind and his own shivers. A flicker of naked longing crosses his face. Gwyndolin has not seen fire this color in years. Dunstan knows he misses it.

“Who placed this here?” the god wonders aloud. “This is not a realm of the Undead; what need for bonfires? And what source for this flame? I can only surmise there is a fire in Ariandel separate from the First Flame, yet alike in function…or not quite alike.” He looks to the dusky, snow-laden sky and wraps his arms around himself. “There is no sun here, nor any other sign of a sustaining flame such as ours.”

Dunstan shrugs. “Gael wanted me to come here, or an Unkindled like me. Maybe he left bonfires for me.”

“Mayhaps…”

Dunstan cares little for the nuances of this bonfire’s placement or the cosmological puzzle it represents. He’s just grateful it is here. It will make it easier for him to heal if he gets hurt, and it will provide necessary warmth. It’s no colder here than in Irithyll, but the wind is biting in a way it is not in the sheltered Boreal Valley.

Dunstan examines Gwyndolin with some concern. The god tires quickly at the best of times, and he is already shivering. Exhaustion combined with cold can be fatal. Dunstan will have to keep an eye on him. At least he seems in decent spirits for now: curious, analytical.

Yorshka, meanwhile, is watching her brother with a smile on her lips as he paces around the bonfire. She seems unbothered by the weather. That’s something.

Dunstan cannot help but smile to himself: he’s fretting like a mother hen. Elisabeth really has tempered his gruffness.

Presently Gwyndolin catches Dunstan looking at him. Self-conscious, the god folds his arms tighter. “What is it thou find’st of such interest, Unkindled?”

“Just you,” Dunstan says, with unexpected affection. “Acting like a sorcerer, studying everything.”

“At least one among us must be rational.”

“And you think you’re the one to do it? You, famous for making a sun that nearly killed you instead of letting the flame go out?”

Gwyndolin does not answer this, and Dunstan wonders if he has gone too far. It was just a gentle poke, he thought, some levity to start the journey. There may be precious little chance for that later on, if the drowsy corvian was any proof. Yet Gwyndolin’s expression is so flat that Dunstan feels sure he has hurt his friend. 

He attempts an apology. “Lin, I didn’t mean -”

A snowball hits him square in the face. Momentarily blinded, he scrubs the snow from his cheeks and blinks his vision clear. When he can see again, he finds Gwyndolin looking slyly at him.

“Irrational I may be,” the god says, “yet mine aim is true.”

Yorshka starts to giggle, and Gwyndolin follows, and soon Dunstan is laughing too, soft laughter that mists in the air. He might as well. Laughter is good. Preserving. Dunstan used to worry about people who had no sense of humor, because they were always the first to go hollow.

“Good,” he says a little breathlessly. “I think we’re going to need it. Could be anything out there.”

~~~

Yorshka turns a circle with eyes closed and arms outspread. She takes a deep breath of evergreen, wet earth, and distant smoke, and lets it out as steam. Familiar smells. This is not Ariamis as she left it, but it is similar enough, all sheer cliffs and snow-dusted trees. The light comes from nowhere. The sky is empty of sun and moon, and yet it is not dark. Yorshka often puzzled over this particular mystery as a child. She had forgotten that.

She has missed this place, in all its harsh splendor. It is awakening long-dormant love and stoking it to greater intensity. That frightens her, because it will make it more difficult to set the needed flame. 

And whatever her feelings for her home, she must be vigilant for her brother’s sake. He is in danger here, Priscilla said. Threats might come at any time in any form. Unless things have changed a great deal, the denizens of the painted world harbor justifiable resentment towards the gods. Yorshka understood this even as a child, although Priscilla nurtured no hatred herself.

At present, the danger is the lack of visibility. The wind is stirring the snow into a glittering veil, making it impossible to see all the way to the other side of the clearing at the edge of which Yorshka and her companions crouch. The place is a warren of rocks and trees, some of them fallen and leaning on their neighbors. Snow slides off their bent boughs at odd intervals. It is difficult to separate these movements from those of the wolves loping in and out of the mist. They are slender ghosts, white and gray like the snow, and thus well hidden.

The trees increase Yorshka’s anxiety. Not the ordinary trees; the other trees, the ones standing too tall and thin on the hillsides around this clearing. Yorshka has never seen trees like these before. Their branches angle down in front of them like long, wild hair caught by the wind. They appear to have faces - sad, feminine faces. Yorshka does not like them. Priscilla taught her early in life that many things in the painted world are disguised, and objects with faces may not be as inanimate as they appear. 

More than any of this, the trees remind Yorshka of Sulyvahn.

She looks up at the nearest one, on a rise to her left. It has little flames on the ends of its…wings?

A horrible image fills her mind: Gwyndolin hanging from those branches, limp and impaled.

Whimpering, Yorshka turns back to Dunstan and Gwyndolin. They are discussing how to proceed.

“How many wolves do your archer’s eyes see?” Dunstan is asking. “If there are only a few, I can manage ‘em.”

Gwyndolin shakes his head. “I do not doubt there are many I cannot see. Should we enter this clearing, we may find ourselves assailed on all sides.”

Dustan snaps the fingers of his left hand. A fireball ignites in his palm, orange and red like the bonfire. “I could just start casting -”

“Nay!” Struck through the heart by sudden pain, Yorshka lifts her hand to Dunstan’s arm. She does not want these wolves to die, not when Madoc has done Gwyndolin such good service. She does not want to see their blood red on the snow like Priscilla’s. “Is there no other way?”

To her surprise, Dunstan lets his flame go out. “I don’t fancy fighting a pack of wolves either, lass.” He gives no reason for this. If he has one, Yorshka suspects it is much more practical than her own. “Any ideas, Lin?”

Gwyndolin bites his lip, looking grim. “Knowest thou any spell to conceal thy body or muffle thy step?”

“Afraid not. You’d have been better off coming here with one of your knights. I’m sure they know those spells.”

“I shall teach thee.”

“Waste of time. I’m rubbish at sorcery.”

Gwyndolin falls silent. Yorshka sees how hard he is trying to avoid upsetting her when he could easily draw the wolves out one by one with his bow or magic. She loves him for that, but at the same time she sees her softness is making this more difficult for him than it needs to be. These wolves are not Madoc, not friends. That should be a simple fact.

“I may be able to extend my spell of concealment to thee,” Gwyndolin says at last, “but thou must remain near to me.”

“How near?” Dunstan asks.

Gwyndolin smiles ruefully. “Near enough to touch.”

Dunstan’s brow furrows at this. “If we’re attacked, I’ll be too close to you to draw my sword. I can’t risk hitting you.”

“Then I ask thee to trust me.” Gwyndolin turns to Yorshka. He must see her shame, because he puts a hand beneath her chin and lifts her bowed head. “’Tis well that my sister hath her own concealing magic. Now…”

He unbuckles his catalyst from his belt and extends his free hand to Dunstan.

“…take mine hand, Unkindled.”

Dunstan hesitates only a second before placing his palm in Gwyndolin’s. Yorshka feels a surge of gratitude to him for trusting her brother, and then an equal burst of pride in Gwyndolin when both he and Dunstan vanish in a golden shimmer. There follows a brief blue glow near the ground, where Yorshka assumes her companions’ feet to be. 

“I believe I am successful,” says Gwyndolin’s disembodied voice.

And Dunstan’s reply: “What…oh, no, no, I don’t like this, this is... Am I still here?”

“Thou’rt speaking.”

“If we get through this, I’m never letting you disappear me again.”

“But ’tis so very convenient. Come, let us see the thing done.”

Yorshka doesn’t need to be told twice. She is eager to be away from this cleaning and its trees with faces and wings. With a wave of her hand she gathers the snow and fog around her, as Priscilla taught her, and vanishes from sight.

The crossing is its own unique torment. The wind is in their favor, carrying their scent away from the wolves, but this blessing comes with a curse. The blowing snow almost obscures the faint shimmer of Gwyndolin’s magic, the only marker of his position. Yorshka has to strain her eyes to keep it in view. That means she cannot always be looking at her feet. She is deathly afraid she will stumble over a root beneath the drifted snow and give them all away, or get lost and be snapped up by one of the trees.

She desperately wants her brother’s reassurance, but she knows better than to speak. All she can do is try to follow where Gwyndolin and Dunstan leads. Only Morgott’s training keeps her from losing her nerve.

Narrow the world and narrow thy fear, the Omen King taught her. 

Yorshka recites that maxim over and over in her mind.

It soon becomes clear that there are more wolves than anyone feared. The animals are perched on hillsides, lounging on dry patches of ground, patrolling perimeters. Even Gwyndolin and Dunstan’s chosen path along the rocks on the clearing’s right-hand side, where the wolves are fewer, is not unoccupied. More than once they have to crouch behind boulders and try not to breathe while a wolf passes by. One comes close enough to see the clumps of snow in its fur. Yorshka imagines hot breath on her skin.

A younger version of herself would have reached out for her companion’s invisible cloaks. Now she restrains herself. She does not want to make them jump. Instead, she focuses on her steps, placing one foot softly and then the other, keeping her tail out of the snow so it makes no sound. She pushes away thoughts of teeth.

Lift foot. Place foot. Watch for Gwyndolin’s golden shimmer. Do it again.

Narrow the world and narrow thy fear.

The crossing passes in minutes that feel like hours. By the time they reach the other end of the clearing and climb a slope where there are no wolves, Yorshka’s chest is burning for air. When Gwyndolin dissolves his spell of concealment, she collapses with a gasp and kisses the snow.

Dunstan sinks to his knees beside her, clutching the hem of Gwyndolin’s cloak. “I take it back,” he says, half panting and half laughing. “You’re brilliant, Lin. You’re perfect. You can disappear me any time you like.”

Gwyndolin kneels and gathers Yorshka into his arms. “Well done, dearest one. Well done.”

Yorshka melts into him, face pressed to his shoulder, and allows herself a few sobs while he strokes her hair. He is trembling just like she is.

Then Dunstan says, “Where are we going, anyway?” and they all begin to laugh, gulping in crisp air, unharmed and so very alive.

It is in this moment of absolute relief that a long, low howl echoes through the forest.

All three travelers fall silent as abruptly as if their heads have been swept from their shoulders. Gwyndolin’s arms tighten around Yorshka. As one, they look up towards the cliff across the path from where they now stand.

There, on a promontory jutting out like a ship’s keel, is a wolf. This one is not like the wolves in the clearing. It is bigger even than Madoc, more of a bear than a dog, draped in thick gray fur, its tapered snout pointed skyward. 

Its head turns towards Yorshka and her companions. She feels its eyes on her and understands that no spell of concealment could ever have fooled that gaze. It could pierce cloud, magic, and soul.

Yorshka’s breath comes in shallow bursts. She is freezing from within. The greatwolf’s eyes are an inexorable command holding her in place.

Is this the danger of which Priscilla spoke? If it is, Yorshka needs to do something. She needs to move. 

She cannot move.

The animal leaps down from the cliff. Snow puffs up from beneath its huge paws as it pads towards its prey.

Gwyndolin releases Yorshka and gets to his feet. By the time he is upright, he is already holding his catalyst in front of him, an old gesture that signifies he is about to blink away.

“Hide thyself,” he murmurs, cold and firm as the greatwolf’s gaze.

On her other side, Dunstan draws his claymore from the sheath on his back and conjures a fireball in his other hand. “Sorry about this, lass. Don’t think we can sneak our way out this time.”

The greatwolf is crossing the mouth of the clearing now. Its silence terrifies Yorshka more than anything. There is something unearthly about it, something not quite there. It might be a spirit were its paws not thudding softly against the snow - or is that Yorshka’s heart? Her blood is so loud in her ears that she can hardly hear the ceaseless rush of wind.

Gwyndolin is right: she should hide. Even if she had the heart to fight, she stands no chance against this enemy. Morgott would certainly tell her not to fight.

But she needs to do something!

She does not move.

Dunstan lifts his casting hand. “Get out of here.”

“Get clear and hide thyself,” Gwyndolin reiterates. His body is taut, his eyes steel.

Still Yorshka is immobile. It will not matter if she hides. The greatwolf could find her on the other side of Ariandel if it wished to. She and her companions only crossed the clearing unassailed because this animal wished to confront them here, apart from the pack. A private test of strength.

The greatwolf is so close now that Yorshka can see its breath misting in the air.

It stops and lowers its head. A growl rumbles from its throat. Its pupils dilate to eclipse amber irises.

Madoc’s eyes are the same color.

And Yorshka has an idea.

“Can’t wait any longer,” Dunstan mutters, and draws back his burning hand.

Before he can loose his fireball, Yorshka does something of which Morgott would very much not approve. Instead of fleeing, she throws herself between her companions and the greatwolf and flings her arms wide. 

“Please!” she cries. 

“Yorshka, no!” - Gwyndolin, agonized. He grabs for Yorshka’s wrist. She pulls away.

Heart hammering through every limb and nerve, she holds out her hand to the greatwolf.

The animal rumbles again. 

On only two occasions - Sulyvahn’s coup and Priscilla’s murder - has Yorshka been so aware that she is unarmed and all but defenseless. To the greatwolf, she is a rag doll. That vulnerability is like burning.

The greatwolf dips its head, as large as Yorshka’s whole body, and sniffs her hand. The heat of its exhalations seeps through her fine gloves.

She sucks air into lungs already full to bursting with held breath.

“Get out of the way!” Dunstan shouts. “You’re throwing your life away!”

He is about to push her aside, Yorshka knows. That is, if she doesn’t fall down first. Her knees are quaking. The edges of her vision are going black.

The greatwolf nudges her hand.

Slowly, shaking all over, Yorshka slips off one of her gloves. 

The greatwolf sniffs a few more times, then licks her bare skin. Its tongue is hot and rough like Madoc’s.

Yorshka wraps her fingers around the dense fur at its neck. She does not let go as the animal tucks in its paws and lies down. 

Their truce is made.

Behind her, she hears Gwyndolin’s catalyst thump into the snow, followed by his knees.

“What in Dark’s name…” Dunstan sounds winded, more frightened than Yorshka has ever heard.

“Madoc,” she says weakly. Her heart is beating so hard that the name almost shakes to pieces. “I smell like Madoc. I embraced him ere we departed Irithyll. ‘Twould seem his scent is welcome here.”

She exhales one shuddering breath and lets her knees buckle. Her face falls into the greatwolf’s fur.

Dizzy, drained, a small lucid part of her reflects that Madoc must have come from the painted world. His ancestors did, at least. The greatwolf knows him somehow, and is willing to look with favor upon his friends. Had Yorshka thought of that sooner, she might have spared her companions their treacherous walk through the clearing.

Disbelief, relief, and wonder crash over her. She starts to cry. 

“Thou couldst not…” Gwyndolin rasps, close to tears himself. “Thou couldst not know Madoc is not a rival to Ariandel’s pack. What possessed thee, Yorshka, I cannot lose thee, I cannot, thou wilt not do this again, hearest thou, thou must not…”

His words dissolve into fear and pain. Yorshka looks back at him: he is on the ground, stark white and rigid. She wants to comfort him, but her mouth refuses to shape speech.

As much as it hurts her to see her brother so afraid, she does not regret what she has done. She used the abilities she has instead of longing for what she lacks, and bought safe passage with her faith. Gwyndolin is unharmed.

She smiles into the greatwolf’s fur. Yes, she would do this again. She would do it many times over if it always ends like this.

Chapter Text

“Art thou vexed with me?” Yorshka asks.

From across the small cave, Gwyndolin glares at his sister, who is leaning against the greatwolf and stroking its fur. In his mind’s eye the animal is not placid but growling, poised to tear Yorshka apart.

“Is that not plain?” he says.

“I only thought to -”

“I instructed thee to remain close to me. Instead thou cast thyself into the teeth of this wolf, knowing not that it would spare thee. Why on earth should I be vexed?”

Dunstan touches Yorshka’s arm. “He’s scared, lass. That’s all.”

Gwyndolin turns his glower on Dunstan, angry at the Unkindled both for speaking for him and for being right: Gwyndolin has not been so afraid since Aldrich bit off his serpents. He is quite certain his heart stopped when Yorshka extended her tiny, defenseless hand to the greatwolf. Even after the animal began to lick her and it was clear that all was well, he could not rise from his knees. His strength had deserted him. Dunstan had to lift him out of the snow. He still hasn’t stopped trembling.

“Come sit beside me,” Yorshka offers. Her voice is small. “Thou’rt chilled. The wolf will warm thee.”

The greatwolf huffs out a cloud of steam as if to demonstrate how much warmer its body is than the air.

Gwyndolin curls into his cloak, away from Yorshka. “I think not.”

“Lin, don’t be like that,” Dunstan says, defensive now. “She was trying to protect us.”

“Her duty is not to protect us. Her duty is not to be ‘of use’ to us.”

Dunstan shakes his head. “You’re always saying how you don’t want to be locked away. You spent half your life being told you couldn’t do this or that because you were too fragile. Don’t do the same thing to Yorshka. Don’t lock her away forever.”

“Lock her -” Rage chokes Gwyndolin. “My caretakers forbade me to sit near an open window lest I take a chill. I forbid my sister to risk her life! Seest thou no difference?”

Yorshka whimpers and hides her face in the greatwolf’s fur.

“I see that your sister’s trying to find out who she is and what she can do. It was a clever thing she did, using Madoc’s scent like that. I won’t deny it was dangerous, but we were right behind her, Lin! We wouldn’t have let anything happen to her -”

“That is not for thee to say, Unkindled. I am Yorshka’s keeper, and I will keep her safe as I see fit!”

“If that’s what you want, you shouldn’t have let her come here. Ain’t nothing safe about this place, for any of us.”

There is indeed increasing evidence of this. On the way to this cave, they came across a mosquito the size of a dog. It was crouched amidst more of the maggoty growths they saw when they first arrived. Hairs bristled from each of its six jointed limbs. Its mouth parts drew up the blood welling through the snow. More blood burst from its engorged abdomen when Dunstan slashed it open.

Later, the greatwolf led them past the ruins of a garrison manned by hulking warriors garbed in furs and antlered helms. The back of their watchtower writhed with yet more patches of rot. 

It all makes Gwyndolin think of the scarlet murk pooling at the Haligtree’s base and the centipede pests wading through it. He wishes Eira were here to scourge this collapsing world with her lightning, if only to relieve the twists of pain in Yorshka’s face. Yorshka is trying so hard to hide her grief. Gwyndolin knows her too well to be fooled.

Then there are the trees. The trees with Sulyvahn’s wings.

They have not moved to attack the party while the greatwolf is with them, but Gwyndolin believes they will if ever the animal departs. He goes cold every time he passes by one of them. His every instinct warns him not to stand too close.

And now they are here, in this shallow cave, resting by a second bonfire. 

Gwyndolin cannot help but feel that there is an intent behind all this. The drowsy corvian, the trees and the wolves, the mosquito, the rotting tower - all beads on a string. Landmarks. They tell a story, and someone wants Gwyndolin and his company to witness it. Perhaps the bonfires are laid out in such a way as to ensure the tale unfolds in the proper order.

Down the path from this cave is a bridge, and at the other end of that bridge is a church. It is not as large or elaborate as Irithyll’s cathedral, but it is the only structure Gwyndolin has seen thus far that is not crumbling. A place of significance. He does not doubt he will find another bonfire there. The church is the next bead on the string, the next setpiece in this drama.

But first, rest. Gwyndolin is cold, and his legs are sore, and his heart is fluttering uncomfortably, and his anger is cooling and revealing that he has been too sharp with Yorshka. He needs to close his eyes a while and recover himself.

He lets the hardness drain from his face. “Forgive me,” he says to the cave at large. “I am not myself.”

“Get some sleep,” Dunstan says, and leaves it at that.

Gwyndolin falls into an uneasy doze to the sound of the greatwolf’s panting.

He dreams he is in a fading twilight village on the sea. He does not know his name or who he is, only that the sea brought him here and took his serpents from him. The settlement’s few residents say he is a deserter gone mad. They all think he is cursed - all save the woman who tends the bonfire and the cat who knows too much. They call him Blue, because when he washed up on their shores he was clutching a metal talisman, a tiny crescent moon: the sigil of the Blue Sentinels who protect these lands.

He sits on the cliffs at the edge of the village and watches the sea. It frightens him. He knows it will come to take the rest of him one day.

Then an Undead visits him and drapes his cloak around Blue’s shoulders. To him Blue speaks the first words he has spoken in…days? Months?

“Thou’rt very kind.”

The Undead smiles sadly. “You say that like no one’s ever been kind to you before.”

Sometime later, there is a storm. The waves are so high they crest the cliffs and fill Blue’s throat with salt and make him cough. 

The Undead returns. He scoops Blue up and carries him into a ramshackle house and sees him dry and warm. Blue falls asleep wrapped in soft blankets.

The sea does not take him.

When Gwyndolin wakes, the greatwolf is gone, though likely not far away. Yorshka is folded up reed-slender against Gwyndolin’s chest. He slips his arms around her and prays his words did not wound her too sorely.

Dunstan is watching him across the bonfire. “All right, Lin?”

“Why should I not be? I am not a porcelain doll.”

“I know you’re not. It’s only…I swear you hardly breathe when you’re asleep. Bothers me a bit, if I’m honest.”

Gwyndolin decides to ignore this comment, because if he does not he will start another argument. “I had a strange dream.”

Why did he say that? It wasn’t strange at all. The setting and characters were unfamiliar, but the symbols were not. Water and drowning, a kind wanderer, a home. Fear, reassurance, security. All common themes in Gwyndolin’s nightly visions, all perfectly explicable. The only strange thing about it is the clarity with which it clings to his mind.

“Ash dream?” Dunstan asks.

“Nay.”

“Bad dream?”

Gwyndolin thinks of the wrathful sea and the nameless Undead’s arms around him and how simple it was to be saved.

“Nay.”

~~~

Gwyndolin has never been afraid of heights. As a youth, his favorite place in Anor Londo was a flat rooftop outside his bedchamber, where he could moongaze until he fell asleep without worrying about rolling off the edge.

The bridge leading to the church is different.

Where the stones of Anor Londo were unmoving, the bridge sways with the slightest breeze. The boards creak underfoot like the deck of a ship. Although they fit together without gaps, the same cannot be said of the ropes holding them up. Gwyndolin or Yorshka could easily slip through the spaces between the twists of hemp.

Below, a sheer drop to a frozen lake, bluer than sky, with shores of ice crystal. 

The ropes may be fraying, but they are all that stand between Gwyndolin and that drop. He clings to them with both hands, inching his way forward and begging his legs not to give out. He dares not look anywhere but at his feet, or he will lose his balance.

“At least we can see the bridge this time,” Dunstan remarks behind him.

Gwyndolin thinks of their walk through the sky above Irithyll to reach Yorshka’s prison tower. Then he makes the mistake of imagining what it would be like to cross this chasm on invisible boards.

“Aye, Unkindled,” he says breathlessly, “that is well.”

He trains his mind on the rasp of hemp against his palms and keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

On the other side, on solid ground, Gwyndolin looks back to see that the greatwolf has returned. It is poised at the start of the bridge, nose in the air, sniffing the wind. 

The church sits on a tor with sheer drops on all sides but one, as if the land around it has been sheared away with a carver’s knife. Withered corvians like the one in the first cave litter the hill up to the doors. Some are kneeling in prayer, some lying prostrate. Yorshka kneels beside each and every one, takes their cracked, emaciated hands in hers, and rings her chime for them.

With Dunstan's words fresh in his mind, Gwyndolin does not stop his sister from ministering to these wretched corvians. Only at the end of the path, past the last one, does he lift her to her feet. Her breath is quivering. Behind her mask of serene compassion, she is awash in sorrow.

She tenses, however, when she sees the man on the church steps. So does Gwyndolin. Beside them, Dunstan’s shoulders stiffen.

The man is dressed from head to toe in black. His stance is casually predatory: arms folded beneath his mantle, one knee bent to take his weight. He carries no weapon that Gwyndolin can see. Either he is concealing an armament or he is confident he does not need one.

Without thinking, Gwyndolin puts out his arm and guides Yorshka behind him.

“Well. Unkindled, are you?” the warrior says in a grating voice that sucks all the scant warmth from the air. “So you’ve slipped into the painting.”

“Maybe I did,” Dunstan says. “What’s it to you?”

“You bring curious companions.” The warrior’s helmed head turns to Yorshka. “A crossbreed girl.”

Crossbreed? How dare he! Gwyndolin clenches his fist to keep from leaping to his sister’s defense. 

To her credit, Yorshka does not bow her head beneath the insult.

“And you,” the warrior goes on, unseen eyes on Gwyndolin. “You - no. You can’t be.”
 
Gwyndolin’s nerves shimmer in warning. He tells himself this is a bluff; the man cannot possibly have recognized him. Dressed in traveling clothes, bereft of snakes and crown, he looks nothing like himself as the wider world knows him.

“Cannot be what, sir?” Gwyndolin laces the title with venom so it sounds as ugly as “crossbreed.”

“No matter. You don’t have the serpents. I take you for a Darkmoon nonetheless. You look the part. Come to judge the guilty in your master’s name?”

“If we came for that, we’d have killed all the corvians on the steps, wouldn’t we?” Dunstan says. “Our ‘crossbreed girl’ gave ‘em healing instead.”

The warrior shrugs. “It’s no affair of mine what you do with these broken things. Waste your time with them if you will. When you’ve finished, Lady Friede has guidance to offer. Go inside, listen, and show respect.”

“Ain’t you a cheerful soul,” Dunstan mutters. 

He turns half away, never quite taking his gaze from the black-clad man, and draws Gwyndolin and Yorshka aside.

“I think he’s Sable Church. Friede is, or was, if Yuria told me true. You should know the Sable Church probably wants my head.”

Gwyndolin looks at him hard. “Thou deemed’st it best to withhold such information until this moment, Unkindled?”

“Didn’t think about it until now.”

“And how, pray, didst thou win the ire of Kaathe’s faithful?”

“I may have led them to believe I would be their Lord of Hollows. Mind you, I never meant to go through with it. I only went along because they made me stronger. Well, after a while they started talking about marriage - I suppose even the Lord of Hollows needs a consort. That sounded all right at first. The woman they chose for me, Anri, was a friend. Then a Londor pilgrim gave me a sword and told me I had to stab Anri in the face with it. I…”

Here Dunstan smiles grimly.

“…stabbed the pilgrim instead.”

Gwyndolin closes his eyes. He can only hope the Sable Church’s operatives in Ariandel are ignorant of events in the outside world.

“You’d have done the same if you were there, Lin,” Dunstan adds. “They were going to hold the ‘wedding’ in Gwyn’s tomb.”

Concern turns to shock and boils into fury. Regardless of Gwyndolin’s troubled feelings for his father, Dunstan’s words drive the breath from his body. So this is what festered during his captivity! The tomb he guarded with his life for so many years became a place of defilement and profane rituals. And after all that, the warrior on the steps wants him to accept guidance from a lady of Londor? It’s too much.

Dunstan reads his thoughts. “But ‘show respect’, eh?”

“Aye. We must,” Gwyndolin says tightly. “We must learn what we can. Show respect…”

“…but watch our backs,” Dunstan finishes. He gestures for Yorshka to enter the church ahead of him. “You go first, lass. I’ll keep an eye on Friede’s man.”

The knight in black nods inscrutably as Yorshka and Dunstan pass. Only when they have both entered the church does he lay a hand on Gwyndolin’s shoulder. It’s a heavy touch. A threat.

“Don’t stray too far, Darkmoon,” he says. “Keep to your bonfires, or you might find yourself lost in the snow.”

Your bonfires. A strange choice of words. Of course, it could mean the warrior thinks Gwyndolin is an Undead. It could also mean he knows Gwyndolin for what he is, in essence if not in name: an heir of Anor Londo.

Gwyndolin shrugs off the man’s hand without a word.

Inside the church, another bonfire crackles in the center aisle. Gwyndolin resists the temptation to hold his hands out to it. He must not show weakness in this hostile place. Instead he contents himself to let the fire’s blessed warmth seep into his legs while he takes in his surroundings.

The church is small and plain, the stone largely unadorned. Stacks of paintings have been propped up against walls and pillars. They are so marred by weather that their subjects have blurred into black and brown smears. The statue of Velka on the altar is in much better condition. The sculptor has depicted the patron of the forlorn in the traditional manner, cloaked and hooded with long hair spilling over her chest. Her hidden face and bowed head remind Gwyndolin of his own stone likenesses in his cathedral. 

Not for the first time, he wonders if he is looking at his mother. He has no way of knowing for certain. Gwyn never told him.

The woman sitting beside the altar is cloaked and hooded like Velka. She is draped in a black clerical habit with a plain gray dress beneath, and her feet are bare despite the cold. Gwyndolin expects antagonism from her, given the treatment he received outside, yet when she speaks her voice is soft and faintly sad.

“I am Friede,” she says. “I watch over this land of the forlorn alongside our Father. Welcome to the painted world, travelers.”

“Your guard dog was none too welcoming,” Dunstan says.

“Ah, pardon Sir Vilhelm. He is loyal to me, and suspicious of outlanders.” Her eyes, a reddish brown that looks almost purple in the firelight, settle on Yorshka. “Yet I suspect thou’rt no outlander, dragon child.”

Yorshka makes her a polite curtsy. “I am not. I was born in this world.”

Friede reaches out and draws Yorshka down to sit beside her chair. “Why return to it now? Thou’rt young yet, and this is no place for the young.”

Be careful, dearest one, Gwyndolin thinks, one hand on his catalyst. Let not thine innocence betray thee.

“I am a pilgrim,” Yorshka says without a tremor. “I would see my late mother’s tower and pay my respects.”

Gwyndolin lets out his breath as softly as he can. Well done.

Friede touches Yorshka’s hair in benediction. “Go to the tower, dutiful one, and then begone from Ariandel. Take thy companions with thee. The ashen one, surely, hath a calling elsewhere, and the other…” Her eyes find Gwyndolin’s and hold them for a long while. “Leave us and forget us, as your kind always have.”

Gwyndolin notes Friede’s use of the formal “you” in place of “thou.” She addressed him as befits a god. She senses his divinity, and she wants him to know it.

“I cannot go,” he says steadily. “I am sworn to protect Lady Yorshka on her pilgrimage.”

“Yorshka,” Friede echoes, “the dragon of spring, so the legends say.” She smiles at Gwyndolin’s sister. “Is that thy name?”

Yorshka nods. She is studying Friede’s face with sadness.

“’Tis a fitting name. I see thou’rt gentle as springtime. Nay, this place with neither warmth nor flame is no place for thee.”

“But there is flame,” Dunstan says. “There’s a bonfire right there. Third one we’ve seen so far. Can’t you see it?”

Friede looks at the central aisle. Her brow knits ever so slightly. “Aye. Canst thou?”

“Sure as the snow falls.”

“Of course 'tis so. Thou’rt Unkindled. Forgive my foolish question. Tell me…knowest thou of a woman named Yuria?”

Dunstan’s face remains impassive. “We met. Wasn’t much interested in what she was selling, if I’m honest.”

“Hm. A pity. Thy plain-spoken manner is pleasing to me. Thou wouldst, I think, have made Londor an unpretentious lord. Rare indeed are sovereigns of that sort.”

“Never much wanted to be a lord.”

“A pity,” Friede repeats. A pause, and then, “Three bonfires, sayest thou?”

“Three of ‘em.”

Friede holds her silence a long while before patting Yorshka’s hand. “Well, stay and warm yourselves, if it be your wish. Then return to your world. Purpose ye have there, I presume. ’Tis a gift. Rejoice in it always.”

Gwyndolin feels Friede watching him as he returns to the bonfire. Yorshka follows reluctantly, fingering her chime.

“She’s Unkindled,” Dunstan whispers so Friede will not overhear. “I can smell the ash on her. If we make an enemy of her - and we might have to - there’s going to be trouble. You know how my kind can fight, Lin.”

“Think’st thou ’tis she who secreted away Ariandel’s flame?”

“I think she has something to do with it. Did you see her face? Half of it’s burned. No Unkindled I ever knew got scars like that from linking the Fire. I’d wager Friede tried to do more, tried to take the flame for herself. That’s what the Sable Church wanted me to do. She wasn’t strong enough, and it swallowed her whole. That would give her good reason to be afraid of fire.”

“The bonfire in this chapel pleaseth her not at all,” Gwyndolin says. “Art thou not likewise afeared of flame, Unkindled? Thy firelinking consumed thee also.”

“It’s not the same. I never tried to take the flame into me. I burned, but not like her.”

“She is sad,” Yorshka murmurs, “and lonely. I wish to comfort her. Must we be enemies?”

“We…” Gwyndolin hesitates. He cannot deny he sees something of himself in Friede, this guardian of a dying world clinging to the past, alone save for one faithful knight. At any other time, this might evoke pity. Now he cannot afford it. If Friede is anything like Gwyndolin at his most stubborn and afraid, convincing her to burn the painting will be all but impossible.

“Perhaps 'twould be prudent to begin with diplomacy rather than swords,” he says for Yorshka’s benefit. Let me not lift her hopes for naught.

“If you could change your mind about Fire, Lin, maybe she can too,” Dunstan concurs. He does not sound optimistic. “If she was that set against it, she would’ve done something about the bonfire right in front of her.”

“She cannot. A bonfire cannot be put out unless its keeper is slain or its source extinguished,” Yorshka recites. Gwyndolin taught her that when she was a child. She was always curious about the inner workings of Anor Londo. 

Dunstan nods. “Then I’m right: there’s a source of fire here somewhere. We just have to find it.”

“Friede seemed troubled,” Gwyndolin observes, “to learn there are three bonfires in Ariandel, if not more. I venture to say she knew only of the one in this church.”

“So they’re new, and they’re not supposed to be here any more than this one is. Someone’s been putting them here.”

“Gael,” Yorshka whispers.

That seems the most likely possibility. Who else but the one who called Dunstan and his companions to Ariandel would prepare the way for them?

“Maybe we’ll find him once we’ve found fire,” Dunstan says. “Maybe he’ll finally tell us what he has do with any of this and why I saw the ash place the first time I touched his hand.”

Dunstan looks out the chapel doors, across the bridge and beyond.

“You know…what if we’re wrong about those visions?”

Gwyndolin shivers at Dunstan’s tone. “Explain thyself.”

“I used to think Fire was the only thing that could make the world rot. Seeing Ariandel changed my mind. There’s no flame here, and it’s rotting all the same. That makes me wonder: what if it isn’t firelinking that turns our world into the ash place?”

Suddenly Gwyndolin can feel no warmth from the bonfire. “The wastelands in our visions were not rotten. They were burned. What save firelinking could do such a thing?”

In answer Dunstan snaps his fingers. A fireball whooshes into his palm, red and orange. As he focuses his intent upon it, however, it fades to black and silver.

“Just a thought, Lin.”

Gwyndolin recalls his dream, the one he all but dismissed. The sea come to take him. His mind replaces the water with abyssal flame.

“Unkindled,” he says sharply, “thou wilt frighten my sister.” And me.

Dunstan closes his fist on the fireball. “Right. Just a thought.”

~~~

For Eira, walking up Anor Londo’s steps is like walking into the court of thrones on the morning she and Morgott changed the world. Now as then, Morgott is waiting for her, hands folded on the hilt of his sword, which he has turned point-downwards to rest on the ground. Unlike then, his sword is not sealed. It shines like oil in the moonlight, rippling with color. Morgott never seals his sword anymore. Eira is very proud of him for that.

She pauses to look up at the rose window of Anor Londo’s abandoned cathedral. She still remembers how she felt when she came here to face Aldrich: full of hate for the monstrous cannibal and afraid she was too late to save the stranger who’d called to her in dreams. This morning is different. She is not going to fight a monster. Her opponent is a god of war, someone who, by Gwyndolin’s account, loves to fight as much as she does. 

The prospect makes her heart race. She cannot wait.

She passes the four Darkmoon Knights on moonlight duty, who sneak inquisitive glances over their shoulders, and makes her way to Morgott. As always, he is utterly still. No hint of flame yet smolders along his sword, while in contrast, Gransax’s bolt is already buzzing in Eira’s ear. Like her, it is eager for battle.

Morgott looks Eira up and down, seeking flaws. Eira has learned to find this endearing rather than demeaning.

“Thou’rt lightly armored,” Morgott concludes. He is being lenient today.

“Aren’t I always? Besides, you’re one to talk. Look at you.”

Morgott is less opposed to wearing proper clothing since he attended Gwyndolin’s ball dressed like the lord he is, but today he has fallen back on his tattered old cloak. He has nothing else to protect his body. Like Eira, he prefers to be nimble in battle, and he is skilled enough not to be hit.

“Know that I disapprove of this foolish endeavor,” he tells her. Eira knows this speech; she could almost recite it by heart. “I go with thee only to ensure thou art not slain. Remain beside me and restrain thy recklessness.”

Truth be told, Eira is glad to be taking this veteran warrior with her into unknown territory, even though, for honor’s sake, he cannot assist her in the final duel with Gwynhael. With his keen mind and Crucible magic, Morgott makes a powerful ally.

Eira folds her arms and pretends to be offended. “And I thought I was doing better at that lately.”

Morgott’s lined face eases: not as much as it does for Yorshka and the Omen children, but Eira notices. It is a silent acknowledgment of the sort she has learned to read like words. The Omen King is a man of many subtleties.

Eira gives herself a preparatory shake. “Ready?”

Morgott answers her by sitting down and folding his hands in his lap, tail tucked neatly around him. He looks ready to slip into that state of meditative half-sleep he enters when he cannot afford true slumber.

Eira sits down beside him and follows his line of sight to a mountain in the distance. Its peak is crowned with the reaching shapes of walls and towers, stark beneath Gwyndolin’s moonlight. They must be very large to be visible so far away.

Wide-eyed wonder bubbles up in her. She has not felt this way since she slid open that first set of doors and stepped blinking into Limgrave’s green hills. For the first time in years, she is traveling to a truly new place! What will Archdragon Peak be like? Like Farum Azula, with dragons soaring in and out of storms? Like the Mountaintops of the Giants, snow-covered with a heart of flame? Or a solemn city like Leyndell -

“Tarnished.” Morgott’s hand lands on one of Eira’s feet, which is wiggling. “Cease.”

“Right.”

Eira forces her limbs to be still and fixes her gaze on the distant mountain. Is this all she needs to do: look at the peak? Is there a mantra she needs to repeat? Dunstan didn’t say anything about that.

I answer the one who asked to see my red lightning, she thinks, with all the honesty in her heart. I’m here.

This is the key in the lock. As Eira looks at the mountain, it grows bigger and bigger in her vision until it blots out the sky, and she can no longer see Anor Londo, not even in her periphery, and she is an ant looking up at stone walls that must have stood for ages…

Then she and Morgott are both gone, leaving four stunned Darkmoon Knights behind.

~~~

There is no transition, no slow awakening from sleep. Eira cannot remember closing or opening her eyes. She is somewhere, then she is somewhere else. It is dark. And she is looking at a sea of stars.

“Morgott?” 

“Tarnished.”

Right next to her. That gives Eira sufficient sense of position to stop feeling like she is about to fall off the edge of the world. She reaches out her arms, and her right hand closes on Morgott’s rough cloak.

Once she is grounded, she allows her surroundings to come into focus. Thin, cold air in her lungs and thin soil under her boots. A black sky above. And stars that are not stars at all, but torches, innumerable torches all burning black and silver, bracketed to rocks or stuck into the ground on poles. By this dim collective light, Eira discerns a narrow, rocky path winding up the mountain.

She inhales the smell of this new place - iron and fire - and tells it hello.

“Hast thou sight enough?” Morgott asks her.

“Enough. Can you see?”

“Darkness is no obstacle to me.”

Of course it isn’t. Eira should have known that. Crucible blessings aside, Morgott’s vision is adapted to the Shunning Grounds’ gloom. The present dimness is no worse.

This settled, Eira sets off up the path, disregarding Morgott’s call for caution. She is bursting to know what lies beyond this curve in the road and to greet this new land properly. She grins at the familiar burn of exertion in her calves and chest as she goes. Those are good feelings, adventurous feelings. Her body likes to work.

She is rounding the bend in the path when her foot collides with a small pile of stones and sends them clattering away. Looking up, she sees that there are scores of these piles all the way up the hill, lit by tiny candles.

“What are these?” she asks when Morgott comes up beside her.

“They are cairns. They honor the fallen.”

“That was encouraging, Morgott.”

“Aye, ’twas. I encourage us not to join them.”

Eira laughs and hops out onto a protruding ledge. From this vantage the sheer mountainside comes suddenly into view, and with it, the lower walls of Archdragon Peak. These are fortress walls, cascades of stone, not carved into the mountain but anchored to it in defiance of weather and gravity. Wind-frayed red banners hang amidst countless torches arranged in the shape of a dragon’s horned head. This is the only decorative touch to what is otherwise an austere structure. A harsh citadel for harsh people, meant to intimidate.

It is as Eira is admiring the vista that a figure wrapped in rags emerges at the top of the path. She sees it from the corner of her eye. Something shifts in her mind as it always does when she prepares for combat, pushing kindness and good cheer aside and leaving fierceness behind. She analyzes the figure at a distance. Firelight gleams on the curve of a shotel in one hand and the edge of a small shield in the other. Human in shape, taller than Eira but not large. Face hooded.

Eira slides her jagged bronze spear from her back. Electricity sparks through it and up her arm, making her nerves tingle. She is ready.

“Let’s see what you can do,” she murmurs.

The figure shuffles a few steps towards her. Then they both break into a run as one.

Eira pulls her spear back, prepared to meet her opponent with a thrust. The figure leaps at her - and its neck extends. It isn’t a human’s neck at all. It’s a snake’s, like the man-serpents of Volcano Manor, foes Eira hoped never to see again. It is aiming for her head, and she has too much momentum to change course.

Behind her, heat. She throws herself to the ground just as Morgott’s flaming sword slices neatly through the creature’s neck. The man-serpent’s head thuds onto the rocks somewhere nearby, followed by the patter of blood.

Eira picks herself up, dusting herself off and gulping thin air back into her lungs. “That one was mine,” she pants.

Morgott scowls at her. “That one nigh took thee in thy throat. Remain beside me.”

Eira rolls her eyes. Whatever she may say, she doesn’t mind it when Morgott worries about her.

Morgott leads the way up the rest of the path. At the top, he stops and indicates the chasm that separates the ridge on which they stand from a second ridge across the way. 

“Be still. Observe. Have I not taught thee thus?”

Eira sighs and extends her pocket telescope. It doesn’t do her much good in the dark, but she can make out three more man-serpents patrolling the opposite ridge.

“Fair advice,” she concedes. “If we can see them, they can see us.”
 
“They may attack at range.”

“I might do that too.” 

She raises Gransax’s bolt. It erupts in growling red sparks and lifts her off the ground, pulling her arm back with a will of its own. Eira flings a scarlet lightning spear across the chasm. Back on her feet, she watches her missile burn its way through the dark. A second later, a body pitches forward over the edge of the ridge.

A fireball follows, cast by the second of the trio of man-serpents. Eira ducks behind a boulder. As soon as she hears the fireball sputter out against the rock, she launches herself upright, her weapon already rumbling again, and throws another lightning bolt. She hurls the third without pause while her fingers are still tingling from the second.

She never sees the man-serpents fall, because she never returns to the ground after her third cast. Gransax’s bolt has carried her forward and off the cliff edge. Her feet flail at empty air for one terrifying second before Morgott’s arm locks around her waist and pulls her back. He holds her against him for the briefest of moments: his way of saying Eira scared him without admitting it aloud.

“Tarnished…” he growls.

“I know. Stay close to you.”

“And mind thy feet.”

Together they follow the path into the citadel. From the inside, it is less a fortress than a labyrinth of corridors, arches, and domed buildings, much of it open to the dark sky. The haze from the torches and the many narrow walkways makes for a hazardous environment. Given all this, resistance is oddly sparse. The streets are empty, and what few enemies roam the stone passages never attack in groups of more than two. Even a larger man-serpent with a battle axe only poses Eira a moderate threat; its slow swings enable her to work her way to its unprotected back. 

Only once, when a man-serpent wielding daggers parries her opening thrust, does she find herself in trouble. It’s her own fault for not recognizing the parry stance. Morgott pulls her forcibly out of the way - “Open thine eyes, if thou wilt!” - and runs the creature through.

It all reminds Eira of Anor Londo. There too, she met little resistance on her way to rescue Gwyndolin save for a handful of Silver Knights and Aldrich’s clerics. But what a monster lay in wait at the end.

Thus, it is with vigilance that she pulls the lever the knife-wielding man-serpent was guarding. A nearby portcullis creaks upwards in a shower of rust, opening the way to a grand avenue as monumental as any in Leyndell. It is open, empty, and exposed. Eira mistrusts it at once.

“Where is everyone?” she asks as she passes through the gate. “Do you think something’s keeping them all away?”

“Keep thy weapon in hand,” Morgott says. Even in the dark, Eira can see his fur standing on end. He is holding his sword away from his side and his off-hand is open, poised to conjure a throwing knife.

Eira does not like to see him so alert. He usually has good reason to be.

Morgott puts out his left arm and steps in front of Eira. “Go carefully. I sense -”

No sooner has he said this than a screech echoes down from above and a massive dragon lands at the other end of the walkway with a crash that shakes the stones. The wind of its outspread wings, so wide they nearly brush the sides of the avenue, whips Eira’s hair back. Its head is ringed by twisted horns like Morgott’s, sharpening into spines down its back. Low in its throat, a red glow presages fire.

Eira blinks wind-born tears from her eyes and takes a tighter grip on Gransax’s bolt. She is a new Tarnished again, and Agheel has just swooped down on the lake, and she is about to race the flames.

“Have you ever fought a dragon, Morgott?”

“Nay. I was a shackled child at the time of the dragon wars,” Morgott says, with the absolute calm Eira both hates and admires.

“Would you like to fight a dragon?”

“Have we a choice in the matter?”

Morgott speaks with a hard smile in his voice. His sword is already aflame, his horns and tail shining as he calls upon his Crucible magic. If Eira didn’t know him so well, she might say he is enjoying himself.

The great dragon rears back and roars. Eira’s teeth rattle.

“Lin told me this place is a temple for warriors,” she says to Morgott. “Pray with me.”

She lifts into the air on Fortissax’s twin glaives. Beneath her, the Omen King unfurls his iridescent wings.

We were born for this.

Chapter Text

“Hit it in the feet!”

“What?”

The dragon lifts its left leg, thick as the bole of an ancient tree. Eira propels herself away and trips backwards up the stone steps behind her. She lands hard on her back just as the dragon’s foot smashes down in a cloud of dust.

Winded, blinking up at the starless sky, Eira can see nothing but the tip of the dragon’s spiny tail flicking in and out of sight. She has lost track of Morgott. Fire blooms in her periphery, and she hopes her dance partner is not in that stream of burning breath.

“That’s how you fight a dragon - you hit it in the feet!” she shouts when she can speak again.

From somewhere amidst the whoosh of flame and air-splitting screeches comes Morgott’s answer:

“And I suppose thou’rt a master dragon-slayer, Tarnished!”

Eira grins at the familiar sarcasm in his voice and pushes herself upright. No sooner does she regain her feet than she has to bend backwards, hands almost touching the ground, while the dragon’s tail whips by above her head. Its passing brings the acrid scent of scorched air. When it is gone Eira glances underneath the dragon’s body and finds Morgott again. He is fighting at the beast’s front, twisting aside as it snaps its jaws at him, trying to land a blow on its head.

“Must’ve killed twenty, at least!” Eira calls through the towering legs. “You should’ve seen how many there were in Farum Azula!”

The dragon lets out another stream of fire. Morgott flattens himself against the wall of the nearest building. “Enlighten me!”

“I told you…” Eira dances around the dragon’s right foot, jabbing at it with her spear. “…under the body’s the safest place to be!”

“Safest it may be, but ‘twill avail us naught if we cannot harm the beast!”

Cannot harm the beast? Of course they can! How many times did Eira circle a dragon on Torrent’s back, swiping at its feet and tail until at last it fell? It takes some time, but it always…

She thrusts at the dragon’s scaly ankle again. There is nowhere near as much blood as there should be, only a few droplets quickly swallowed by the grayish powder drifting from the wound.

Eira sighs. She hates it when Morgott is right about things like this.

She wheels away from the dragon’s tramping foot and skims its tail instead, prodding it as she goes. Still more dust. “Then what are we supposed to do?”

At the dragon’s front, Morgott lifts into the air on his wings of light. Fire arcs from his sword and catches the beast on the snout. This time there is blood; Eira sees the spray glitter redly in the torchlight.

The Omen King lands and immediately turns aside to avoid the dragon’s next stream of flame. “We strike from above!” he calls into the burning rush.

And your wings won’t be enough for that, Eira thinks. While it is true that few living creatures can withstand a direct blow to the head, this one is no ordinary animal. It is hardier than any of Eira’s previous foes, save perhaps Farum Azula’s ancient five-headed lord. If Eira is to strike a decisive blow, she’ll have to do something exceptional.

She arches her dancer’s body backwards again as the dragon’s tail sweeps across her - and catches an upside-down glimpse of the tower on the creature’s left side. Staircases and balconies stacked high with torches to light the way.

Eira knows what she must do.

She barks out a last few words - “Morgott! Keep it busy!” - and she is off, sprinting under the dragon’s scaly gray body and into the tower’s lowest level without waiting for a reply.

She has a split second to register the three man-serpents in this circular stone room before a roar behind her alerts her to incoming fire. She flings herself back out of the room and presses herself to the tower’s outer wall. The dragon’s flaming breath scours the chamber in which she stood seconds before. 

Sorry, Lin, she thinks, I’m sure your snakes were nicer than these.

It’s one of those absurd, out-of-place thoughts that only come to her in the midst of battle. She’s learned to see them as a protective mechanism, her mind providing her with comic relief as a shield against fear. This time she focuses on one word: Gwyndolin’s name.

I’m going to get this dragon out of the way, Lin. I’m going to bring your brother back.

The tower floor is still hot and glowing red when Eira runs back inside. She takes little notice of the three piles of ash on the floor. Her gaze is fixed on the stairs on the other side of the room.

Let the game begin.

Left behind, Morgott casts an anxious, exasperated glance at the tower. When he said “we strike from above”, he certainly did not intend for the Tarnished to jump from the highest point in the vicinity. But of course she took it that way. The girl still thinks in excesses and extremes.

Well, there is nothing he can do about it now, as usual. If he must be left alone to fight, then by the Erdtree, he will fight.

He leaps away from another savage bite, lets fly a conjured dagger in midair and watches it bury itself in one of the dragon’s horns. Landing, it strikes him for the first time that if there were a primordial Crucible in these lands, this beast would be his kin. They would be linked down the ages by horn, tail, and wing.

There is no Crucible in these lands to Morgott’s knowledge. Nonetheless, bestial blood runs in his veins, as it does in the ancient being before him. They are fellows.

With that thought, he throws wide the doors behind which he stores the full extent of his Crucible magic. He never keeps them locked or sealed anymore; he can open them with a single silent word. And they open eagerly now. His horns and tail glow red-gold, and his belly warms with the foretaste of fire. The words Knight Siluria first spoke to him when he was a child imprint themselves on his mind: You are not a sin, little lord.

The dragon opens its mouth to breathe fire once more. Morgott does not move.

He is not going to kill this creature; that is for the Tarnished to do. But he is going to meet it in battle as a divine beast.

I am the kindred of warriors, kindred of dragons, descended from gods. I carry mine ancestors within me.

He has accepted that lineage and everything it contains, the beauty and the horror. Now he will make his own.

When the flames come searing towards him, he meets them with flames of his own, not from his sword but from his mouth, from deep inside him. As always, his heart races with wonder to find that it does not hurt him a bit.

Far above him, Eira has reached a magnificent state where she is no longer running, but flying. Her feet are light against the stones, her body a part of the air. She strives for this state of being in every battle she fights. It tells her she is going to succeed.

A fireball hisses against the stones to her left and just behind her as she hurdles up the stairs several at a time. She has found the man-serpents who were so strangely absent from the keep’s lower levels, and they are not pleased to see her. One of them darts out from a corner at the top of the stairs, knife thrust forward. Eira tucks and rolls past it, but not quite in time; she feels the dull burn of the knifepoint punching through her battle leathers and into her side. A shallow wound, she thinks, and then she is up and running again, past a second lunging man-serpent, up a rickety wooden staircase, and onto a balcony. 

She pauses, heart thudding, to watch fire rake the wide avenue below. Morgott’s sword is a flash of darker red at the dragon’s feet, his tail and horns a golden shimmer. Even without seeing any more than this, Eira knows he is beautiful.

A little longer. Hold it there a little longer.

Down on the avenue, Morgott is dancing as he has not danced since he fought the Formless Mother’s phantoms. 

The dragon lifts one foot to stomp. Morgott cartwheels nimbly away and heaves a golden spear into its ankle. Roaring its fury, the beast bends low and and gnashes at him. He seizes one of its horns in his free hand. The dragon tosses its head, trying to shake him off. Morgott releases his grip at the apex of the arc, spreading his wings to stall his upward impetus, and lifts his sword to the fireless sky. Hundreds of incanted blades rain down in the lines of a star. When Morgott served the Golden Order, those lines were straight. Now they curl like roots or Crucible flames.

When he touches down, Morgott’s blood is singing and Siluria’s words have become his own:

I am not a sin!

Surely this must be how Gwyndolin feels when he summons forth his storm of arrows. 

Above, Eira has almost reached the top of the tower. Only one obstacle now lies between her and a balcony from which she can attack the dragon: a round chamber, open to the sky, occupied by a single man-serpent. It is bigger and sturdier than any of the foes Eira has seen on the tower thus far. A chain axe rests in its broad palms, the metal glinting in the torchlight.

Eira knows what is going to happen even before the man-serpent lifts the axe over its head and begins to spin the chain. She has no time to waste fighting this enemy hand-to-hand; her best hope is to be swift. She wills lightness and speed into her straining legs, eyes on the whirling axe, and catapults herself into a roll an instant before the man-serpent releases its weapon. The chain sails over her. She hears rather than sees the axe clang into the ground somewhere behind.

Eira pushes herself past the man-serpent and through the balcony’s arched entrance with all her remaining stamina. Sparks nip at her cheeks: the man-serpent’s axe has struck the doorway. She does not stop. She is out on the balcony now, and the dragon is just below her, swinging its great head under Morgott’s assault. 

A wise Tarnished would have waited for the dragon’s head to come into position. Eira is not a wise Tarnished. Never once slowing her pace, she puts on a last spurt of speed and hurls herself off the balcony into empty space.

Cold air rushes past her. It rips away Eira’s breath and tries to pull Gransax’s bolt from her hands. She turns it point-downward and clutches it so tight the metal edges almost break her skin.

For a few terrifying seconds, Eira is a toy tossed out a window by a careless child.

Then, screaming her battle cry, she plunges down on the dragon’s head and drives in Gransax’s bolt to fully half its length.

The beast screeches and thrashes wildly in its death throes. Eira loses her grip and goes flying off its head.

Morgott’s mind wipes away all thoughts but one:

Catch her catch her catch her

He drops his sword and backs up, away from the dying dragon crumpling to the ground with a thud that raises dust from the stones. Morgott tries to adjust his position appropriately, but the Tarnished is a dark blot against a darker sky, difficult to see. He cannot be sure he is in the right place. What if he is wrong? The Tarnished will die. He will have failed in his highest duty.

He shifts from foot to foot, consumed with dread. The Tarnished tumbles helplessly out of the air…

 …and collides with Morgott’s chest. 

He staggers back a pace and pulls the Tarnished close, her body cradled in the crook of his arm, her head on his chest. Her blood is warm and sticky against his skin. She is shaking. Laughing. 

“Thou’rt wounded,” Morgott says. His voice wavers a little, for which he silently condemns himself.

“What?” The Tarnished lifts her head. Her eyes are wide and bright with battle-fervor. “No, I’m not.”

“Thou art.”

“Oh, my side? Just a scratch.”

“Be still.” Morgott lays the fingertips of his free hand on the bloodied rip in Eira’s tunic. Golden healing light wells up.

The Tarnished is still grinning, apparently insensible of pain. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

It was indeed. In fact, Morgott is fighting not to grin himself. That would not be a responsible thing to do.

“‘Twas foolish,” he says. “A lord cannot behave as such.”

Eira tilts her head chidingly. “Admit it. You enjoyed yourself.”

Morgott sets aside the reprimand on his lips. His lord is tucked safely in his arms; that the most important thing for now.

“‘Twas a feat worthy of song and story, Tarnished.”

~~~

“Dunstan lit this one, didn’t he?”

Sirris glances down at the silver bonfire at her feet.

“He did.”

“Are you sure it’s going to work?”

“Of course it will.”

Sirris is less certain than she sounds. For once, she cannot fault Amalie for asking questions: this bonfire does not look at all capable of transporting them across the length of Lothric Kingdom to the castle that was its capital. Like all fire in this new age, it is pale and washed-out compared to the sun-hued flames of old, and so quiet too. It hardly crackles as it licks at its fuel.

Upon reviewing these thoughts, Sirris finds them disrespectful in an offhand sort of way. After all, Gwyndolin is much like this fire: quiet and pale compared to his exalted family, yet with an undeniable strength all his own. Perhaps Sirris should not be so quick to judge the bonfire by its appearance.

Amalie cocks her head at the flames. Against the whiteness of Irithyll’s central courtyard, she looks like a tiny dark bird, all her movements quick and tight. The girl does nothing slowly except when it comes to getting out of bed in the morning.

“I thought all the bonfires went out with the First Flame,” she says.

“They did.” 

Sirris deliberates for a moment, then decides to humor Amalie with an explanation. There is a chance that talking it through will help Sirris to accept what Dunstan has done here: a thing which, before Dark, would have been unnatural at best.

“This bonfire is no longer what it once was,” she clarifies. “It provides no healing or resurrection, nor would it undo the curse of hollowing if such a scourge still plagued the world. It serves solely for travel. Even in this age of darkness, Undead bones still burn, and Undead bones hold memories. It is those memories that link the bonfires together across great distances.”

That is Dunstan’s theory, at any rate. Thus far he has only relit the bonfires in Irithyll and Anor Londo. As for the ones in Lothric Castle, to which Sirris and Amalie now seek to travel, it is unknown whether they are still extant and active. They were active at one time, before the end of Fire. No one from Irithyll has been to the castle since then, and many things may have changed.

Sirris trusts Dunstan. She really does. She trusts his sword and his honor, without which she could not have felled Creighton or put an end to Hodrick’s violence. What she does not trust is his understanding of primordial divine magic. The Unkindled thinks everything is simple. Sometimes he is right to think so and sometimes he is not. Sirris fears the bonfire before her may be an example of the latter.

Presently Amalie shoulders the pack that contains tightly rolled blankets and a bit of food and water for her and Sirris. It’s a small pack: they won’t require much sustenance for what will (presumably) be a short journey. They can share humanity with each other if they feel the need for additional energy.

“Well,” Amalie says, “there’s only one way to find out.”

She reaches out her hand to the bonfire.

It will be all right, Sirris tells herself. The bonfire will work. It will take her and Amalie to Lothric Castle, where they will find Gwynevere alive and well. They will bring her home. Gwyndolin will smile his beautiful smile, and Sirris will rest easy in the knowledge that she has fulfilled one of the two duties she considers most sacred: she will have made her captain happy.

This will not be like Sulyvahn’s coup. There will be no mistakes, no running away. This time Sirris will prove herself worthy of Gwyndolin’s trust.

She extends her own hand to the silver flames. The glow blurs Amalie’s elfin features, rendering them almost angelic. Sirris is not fooled. She knows the chaos contained in that petite body.

“Restraint, Amalie,” she warns.

Amalie’s fist, held to her chest in salute, bespeaks obedience. Her smile says otherwise.

“Yes, ma’am. See you on the other side.”

Amalie’s freckles become cinders, and then both she and Sirris are gone.

~~~

Sirris’s feet slam into frosted ground. She only keeps her balance by lurching forward, bent at the knees, and windmilling her arms in an undignified manner. A thump to her right informs her that Amalie has been even less graceful. The girl is laughing between gasps, as usual. Everything is amusing to her. She grinned her way through the Aldrich Plague as though it were a grand game rather than a nightmare unleashed.

Sirris is not amused in the least. The bonfire has not borne her to Lothric Castle. It has dropped her and Amalie in the middle of a vast, barren plain that might be anywhere in the world. She is disoriented, momentarily helpless.

It’s already going wrong.

Then Amalie picks herself up from the frozen grass and says, “Oh. We’re not far off.”

Sirris turns so she is facing the same direction as Amalie, dark-sight sharpening as she goes, refining blackness into exquisite clarity, every blade of grass outlined in silver.

She and Amalie are standing on the shore of a frozen lake, stretching out to the base of a steep cliff on the other side. At the top of that cliff are the crooked towers of some nameless village or other. And above that, atop another sheer rock face, turrets and bridges pile towards the sky in pyramids of stone. Dark-sight turns everything monochrome, so Sirris cannot make out the distinctive red tiled roofs, but she knows those silhouettes. Nothing else in this part of the world looks quite like Lothric Castle, with its tiers and tiers of towers growing smaller and more spindly the higher they climb, as if the builders sought to construct their own mountain.

Amalie whistles softly. “There’s a sight, and no mistake. Never seen it from this side before. Well, it could be worse, couldn’t it? We could’ve ended up in the catacombs! Dunstan said there are catacombs between Irithyll and Lothric Castle where you have to kill the skeletons twice before they’ll stay dead, and he fought a giant that crawled out of the abyss with glowing bracelets on -”

“Amalie.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“We are below. The castle is above.” Sirris speaks with dread clenched tight in her teeth. “We cannot reach it.”

Amalie looks from her to the castle and back again. The confidence in her dark gaze does not so much as flicker. “There’s a path up the cliff. Must be.”

Sirris’s heart sinks sickeningly. So close! So close, and her goal is out of reach. 

It is happening again. It cannot be happening again!

“You cannot know…” she starts to say.

She trails off at the look on Amalie’s face. The girl’s carefree mood has dissipated. She is pale beneath her freckles, her body taut and head cocked. Sensing.

“Do you feel that?” she whispers. She hardly moves her lips.

Only one thing on earth can make Amalie hold so still.

Sirris closes her eyes. Oh, gods, no. She is wrong. Let her be wrong.

Amalie isn’t wrong. Sirris feels it too now: a vibration in the soles of her feet, faint but growing stronger with every heartbeat. She knows that vibration. She felt it a few nights ago when she went hunting with Gwyndolin and the warriors of Irithyll.

But she is not with the warriors of Irithyll now. She may as well be alone.

Amalie looks at her, eyes wide, pupils dilated to their fullest extent. “Ash-worm.”

Sirris glances at her feet. The armor protecting her legs is beginning to rattle.

“Run.”

“I think we can take it -”

“Amalie, run.”

For once, the girl obeys. She explodes into motion like a startled bird, sprinting for the lake, pack bouncing on her shoulders. 

Sirris follows. The ground shakes under her as she forces her legs to move. Her estoc knocks into her hip with each pounding stride, but she does not feel it, feels nothing but the ground she is pushing away beneath her feet. That is all that matters. She needs to get off solid ground and onto the ice before the ash-worm surfaces. The creature will not follow onto frozen water.

Amalie is shouting her name, or at least Sirris thinks so. She cannot make out any words over her own heaving breaths. The tremors are growing, tipping her off balance. 

Ahead of her, Amalie has already reached the lake. She skids to a halt a hundred paces out, flails herself around to face the shore and holds out her hands. “Come on!”

The strongest tremor yet tosses Sirris forward. She does not fight it. Instead she uses its momentum, allowing it to pitch her onto her belly. She hits the ice and loses her breath. The blow resounds through her whole body, but she is safe. Amalie is sliding over to her and pulling her further from the shore.

Sirris scrambles upright. Her feet slide. She uses Amalie for support and almost pulls the tiny girl down.

Amalie’s uniform headdress is askew, her cheeks flushed, but she is smiling again. “You made it,” she pants. “We both -”

On the shore, the worm erupts: just its mouth and a bit of its body, just enough to scent the air before sinking back underground. That is more than Sirris wants to see. 

A gaping cave ringed with sharpened stalactites rising to swallow the sky. 

Stony armor, each plate as long as Sirris is tall.

And chunks of frozen earth bursting out in all directions.

Time slows. Sirris watches one of those chunks fly in a perfect arc towards the lake.

Then there is a crash, and a grinding, shattering sound, and a brief drop, and black water closes over Sirris’s head.

The cold drives away whatever breath she has managed to regain. The dark drives away her composure. All the Darkmoon Knights are trained in cold water survival, but just now Sirris remembers none of that. Chill needles sting every inch of her body. All she can think is that this must have been what Gwyndolin felt when Aldrich tried to drown him: this cold, this dark, this biting.

The thought jolts Sirris back to herself. If her captain could survive, so can she.

Hatred ignites. It is stronger than the weight of her armor pulling her down, stronger than the terrible pressure crushing her chest. She kicks and pushes at the water with all four limbs, upward, imagining with each stroke that she is pushing Aldrich back into the grave. In her mind she turns Gwyndolin’s name to fire and wills it to sustain her until she can breathe again.

The cold is so intense it has bent back around to burning. It hurts. Sirris has never known such encompassing pain as this. Her strokes weaken. Her hands claw feebly for the surface.

Just a bit further…

She thinks of Gwyndolin at his first ball, radiant in robes of burgundy and silver brocade, extending his hand to her for a dance.

She throws all her strength into one final push towards that hand. 

Sirris’s head breaks into open air. She takes a long, scraping gasp and splutters the water from her lungs. Her breath fragments into shivers. Much too fast and shallow. She needs to bring her inhalations under control or she will faint.

Somewhere in the recesses of her panicked mind, her training gains a foothold. Led by instinct, she throws her hand onto the ice and digs in with the small ice pick set into her gauntlet for just such a purpose as this. One hand, then the other. Two anchors. 

Once she is sure she is not going to drown, she shakes her dripping headdress out of her eyes and locate Amalie’s blurry form in front of her. The girl has not fallen into the lake. She is stretched out on her stomach with her arms held out to Sirris.

“I’ve got you,” Amalie says, or something like it. It’s difficult for Sirris to hear through the water in her ears. 

She is in no position to object.

Amalie drags her onto solid ice with surprising strength. Sirris does not resist; her body is limp and leaden. Only when they are both a safe distance away from the hole in the lake does Sirris collapse, soaked, shuddering, and panting unevenly for breath, in Amalie’s arms.

“I’ve got you,” the girl says again, rocking Sirris like a child. “You’re all right now.”

~~~

Amalie spies a cave in the cliff on the opposite side of the lake and half carries Sirris to it. It is the longest walk Sirris has ever known. Shaking, coughing, the sunless air slicing through her clothes, she can barely stay upright. Amalie’s short stature does not help matters.

In the cave, Amalie strips Sirris of her wet clothes and armor with small, dexterous hands, wraps her in the blankets from the satchel, and lights a fire (blessed be pyromancy forever!). Then she takes Sirris’s numb hands and begins rubbing warmth back into them. Part of Sirris wants to push the girl away: she does not need to be looked after, certainly not by a junior knight who scarcely deserves the title. A larger part of her is consumed with the desire to be warm. Despite the blankets and the tight ball she has made of her body, she is still shivering hard, her teeth chattering. So she swallows her humiliation and lets Amalie work.

Eventually, color returns to Sirris’s fingers. Satisfied, Amalie turns to her satchel and takes out a handful of the dark-loving mushrooms she brought from the forests around Irithyll. Sirris watches without much interest as Amalie skewers the mushrooms on sticks and holds them over the silver fire. The cave fills with their earthy scent.

True to form, the girl talks all the while: “I need to keep you awake until you’re warmer,” she says. Sirris cannot argue with this reasoning; it is quite correct. She is heavy and drowsy with fatigue, dangerously so. If she slips into slumber now, she may not wake. She needs a distraction.

And Amalie is happy to provide. Her babble washes over Sirris like a brook over stones.

“I’ve always wondered about these talismans the captain gave us,” she says, toying with the swatch of white silk at her waist. “They cast Dark miracles. There’s nothing strange about that now, but the captain told me he’s been giving his knights these talismans since before the end of Fire, when Dark magic wasn’t allowed. Why would he do that? Why not just use catalysts that don’t cast Dark magic? Was he testing his knights to see if they could resist temptation? Or did part of him know even then that he couldn’t stop Dark from coming, so he might as well try to master it? He couldn’t practice Dark magic himself, since he was Allfather, so he secretly gave his knights the tools to do it instead. Or maybe I’m wrong and it really was just a test of faith.”

“You are most certainly wrong.” Sirris’s voice comes hoarse. She has to extract the words from the viscous fog on her mind.

Amalie looks over at her and smiles. “You sound more like you now. How are you feeling?”

Wretched is the honest answer. Sirris’s body aches from the strain of her swim, down to the bones. Her throat is raw from coughing. And now that the immediate danger is passing, shame is working its way back in. Precision and elegance - ha! Sirris isn’t exactly upholding the Darkmoon virtues today, is she? She didn’t last five minutes outside Irithyll before she ran headlong into disaster. Now she is huddled in blankets, weak as a kitten, dark hair hanging in wet strings, utterly dependent on a girl who cannot keep her bunk in order no matter how many warnings she receives. This is not the glowing report Sirris hoped to bring back to Gwyndolin!

She so wanted this to be perfect. She wanted to prove that she is not like her grandfather, and most of all not like her former self, the woman who fled Sulyvahn’s coup instead of dying for her god. All she has proved thus far is that she is incompetent and unfit to be Gwyndolin’s lieutenant.

To her horror, her eyes begin to burn. She puts her head on her knees and hopes her shivering will disguise the sobs she has no will to resist.

Of course, Amalie notices anyway: another shame to add to the list.

It’s only a few seconds before Sirris feels a small hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Amalie asks.

Sirris is too exhausted to stop herself from speaking. “If Master Gwyndolin could see me now...”

“He’d be glad you’re all right. The captain likes you.”

That cuts, even though Amalie says it kindly.

“I failed him.”

“What? Sirris, it’s not your fault a worm broke the ice.”

Sirris was referring to more than today’s misfortune, but she cannot - will not - say that to Amalie. 

“I promised him I would bring his sister home.”

“And we will! Nothing’s ruined, you just…got the bad things over with at the beginning. It’ll be better now.”

Sirris’s fallen comrades would not have made any mistakes. They would have known better than to use an untested, experimental bonfire. They would have avoided the ash-worm’s shower of rubble. They would be up the cliff and in Lothric Castle by now, not sitting here with scarcely the energy to hold up their heads.

Amalie squeezes Sirris’s shoulder. “The captain fell through ice himself once, remember? Madoc pulled him out but he still got sick afterwards, and we were all so worried. Even he isn’t perfect, you know.”

Irrational anger flares. “Do not speak against Master Gwyndolin.”

“I’m not! I would never! I owe him…everything.” For the first time she can recall, Sirris hears something dark and sad in Amalie’s voice. “I’m only saying he makes mistakes like any of us. So don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Sirris laughs bitterly into her knees. “It is not so simple.”

“Why not?”

Oh, if Amalie knew that Sirris serves not only for herself, but for every Darkmoon Knight who fell to Sulyvahn’s treachery. If only she knew that Sirris must be especially excellent because she walks in the shadow of her grandfather’s sin. She carries ghosts with her everywhere she goes. 

How could she possibly explain all that to a near-child?

“You would not understand,” she mutters.

“I wouldn’t?” Amalie’s voice hardens so suddenly that Sirris looks up at her, tears and all. The girl’s eyes are gleaming with unspoken pain. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’d understand. Why don’t you try me? You might learn something.”

They hold each other’s gaze, both breathing hard. For a brief moment, Sirris wonders if she has misjudged Amalie entirely.

Then Amalie looks away, back to the mushroom skewers she is roasting over the fire. “You should eat. You need to get your strength back.”

Shivering and aching in every limb, strength feels very far away to Sirris. Nonetheless, she accepts the skewer Amalie offers her, clutching her blankets tight with her other hand, and takes a bite of chewy mushroom.

The first thing she notices is heat, glorious heat. It spreads down through Sirris’s throat and into her chest, reminding her body what temperature it is supposed to be. She cannot help but sigh with gratitude.

The second thing she notices is that Amalie has flavored the mushrooms with a warm spice that blooms across Sirris’s tongue and stills her chattering teeth. This is such an unexpected, thoughtful touch that she almost starts to cry all over again. Gods, she isn’t at all herself just now. She never cries.

She looks up to find Amalie smiling at her. “Is it all right?” the girl asks.

Sirris nods.

“I’m not completely useless, ma’am.”

“You were quick and calm today, I grant you. Calmer than I.”

Amalie shrugs and takes a bite of her own mushroom skewer. “I wasn’t the one in the water. It’s easy to be calm when you’re not the one in the water.”

Ordinarily, Sirris would resent such an unnecessary defense of her honor - she can defend her own. She is so tired and there is such youthful frankness in Amalie’s words, however, that she accepts them without protest.

“I suppose it is.”

You were the ones in the water once upon a time, my comrades, my lord. Were you calm? Or were you as frightened as I?

~~~

He watches.

He has eyes everywhere on the peak. The man-serpents, the wyverns, even the rock lizards. He is their god, and they are the windows through which he looks out from the storm.

The vision he is sharing with the ancient wyvern flashes white as the young woman sinks her weapon home. The creature falls. Stones rush up to meet it. Among its last earthly sights is torchlight glinting on its opponent’s bronze spear. Red like her crackling, growling lightning.

A curious implement, he thinks. As if a smith forged a storm into metal.

He wants to see it in person.

This is his only thought. He has no further response to the wyvern’s defeat. He no longer thinks of anything other than weapons and battle. 

He is a weapon himself now. Somewhere amidst the endless years, he ceased to be a god of war and simply became war. His antique swordspear never leaves his hand. It is his foundation and his meaning, the only name he has left. To put it down would be self-annihilation.

And yet, deep inside, in a place long lost to his conscious mind, he knows it was not always this way.

In that place he holds memories. Hidden and protected, untarnished.

In one of those memories he is running down a corridor of golden light with arms outspread like wings. On his shoulders, a tiny figure dressed all in white laughs and laughs.

Chapter Text

Eventually, Amalie deems Sirris warm enough to sleep without endangering herself. Her chatter, until now intended to keep her comrade awake, turns soft and soothing. Sirris is far too tired to resent it.

“Sometimes I dream about the captain’s first ball,” Amalie says. “I know there have been others since then, but that one was special. The magic we made, Sirris! The fireflies, the trees, the music! And the food, of course.” She giggles, then adds tenderly, “That was the happiest night of my life.”

Mine as well, Sirris thinks.

She falls asleep with Amalie’s patter in her ears and a sweet ache in her heart.

When she wakes, she does not know how long she has rested. It must have been some time: she feels more like a human being and less like a thawing corpse. She is still sore and a little shivery, but she thinks she can convince her body to get up and move. 

She pushes herself off the cave floor, groaning softly at the tightness in her limbs, and meets Amalie’s dark eyes. The girl is sitting a few feet away, feeding sticks to the silver fire.

“Feeling better?” she asks, ever the optimist.

“That is immaterial. We have a task before us, and we must complete it.”

“If you need more rest, you should take it. Don’t be a martyr.”

Sirris flinches. A martyr is precisely what she must be in exchange for her failures. She owes that much to her captain and fallen siblings-in-arms.

“I regret that I will be slow today,” she says, as if Amalie had not spoken, “if indeed there is a path up this cliff at all.”

Amalie brightens. “There is. I found it.”

“When?”

“While you were sleeping.”

“You mean to say you left me unconscious and unguarded?”

Amalie shakes her head vehemently. Her dark hair is coming loose from its bun and curling against her cheeks because she has (against regulations) taken off her uniform veil.

“Of course not!” she insists, gesturing at the cave mouth. “I left a friend to stand watch. It’s still out there if you want to see.”

Skeptical, Sirris follows Amalie’s pointing finger to the entrance of the cave. She does not know what she expects to see - something dubious, most likely. What she finds instead is a Silver Knight standing erect outside the cave with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other.

Surprise overcomes disdain. “An illusion?”

Amalie nods. “Would’ve protected you if anything got too close.”

Sirris scans the Silver Knight’s back. Although illusions are not her specialty, she can tell that this one is quite good. Its elegant plate armor, right down to the slender horns on its helm, is indistinguishable from that worn by the knights who patrolled Anor Londo before Sulyvahn and Aldrich turned them.

“Don’t look at the edges,” Amalie says. “They’re a mess.”

The edges are the most difficult part of any illusion, because that is where the magic is thinnest. Hasty or unskilled conjurings often flicker at the margins and betray their unreality. Sirris squints at the Silver Knight for a long while and sees no such shimmer. If it’s there, as Amalie says it is, it must be slight. For once, Sirris has no criticism to offer.

She reviews Amalie’s recent actions in her mind. Thus far, the girl has helped Sirris escape drowning, frostbite, and hypothermia, scouted the way forward, and provided a vulnerable companion with protection. She has, to Sirris’s disbelief, behaved as a model knight. Can this really be the same girl who must be warned not to burn down Irithyll every time she hunts the dregs of Deep?

Amalie seems to know Sirris is lost for words. She dissolves her illusion with a wave of her hand and her cheeks flushed with satisfaction. 

“I think your clothes are dry,” she says. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

“Put on your veil,” Sirris says.

Amalie rolls her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

There. That’s more like it.

Sirris’s clothes have indeed dried beside Amalie’s fire, but they are wrinkled and stiff with the cold. She can only hope her body heat will soften them over time, and accept that she isn’t going to look her best for her audience with Lady Gwynevere. There is nothing to be done about that. Sirris comforts herself with the knowledge that dignity lies as much in speech and bearing as it does in appearance.

Amalie leads Sirris to a narrow crevice in the cliff not far from their cave - so narrow it is almost impossible to differentiate it from the rock around it, let alone pass through it.

“It opens up a little ways in,” Amalie says. “It’s a tunnel. It’ll take us to the village at the top of the cliff, below the castle.”

“How do you know that?” Sirris asks. “You cannot have explored this tunnel fully. And how on earth did you find it?”

“I have good eyes, ma’am.”

“This is the sort of entrance that goes unnoticed save by those who already know where it is. You must have known, or suspected at the least. Have you been here before?”

“‘Course I have. I lived in that village before I came to Irithyll. Well, if you can call it living.”

Sirris goes rigid. Unless she is entirely disoriented, that village is where Hodrick made his grisly altar. How much has Amalie seen?

“You said you had never seen the castle from this side before,” Sirris says, hoping the girl’s reply will dispel her fears. “How can that be so, if you came to Irithyll from the settlement above us?”

“When I left home,” Amalie says, “I didn’t look back.”

She presses herself into the crevice without another word. Sirris is grateful to follow: the narrow space does not allow for speech or secrets. She never thought she would be so glad to shuffle sideways through a gap scarcely wider than her own body, feeling her chest and armor grating against rock.

The crevice is short, however. When they emerge into a winding, dirt-floored tunnel on the other side, it doesn’t take Amalie long to find her voice again.

“Do you think the tunnels under the Carthus catacombs are anything like this?” she asks. “Dunstan told me about them. He said there are tunnels leading to a lake that bubbles and smokes, and the skeletons there were manning a huge ballista, and he got them to fire on a rock worm so he didn’t have to fight it himself! I wish I were clever like that! I’d probably have wasted all my mana throwing fireballs at it.”

“Amalie,” Sirris huffs. The tunnel is beginning to climb, and her strained legs are already burning. “We need not speak.”

“We’ve got to do something to pass the time. Go on, tell a story, ma’am. You never tell stories.”

“I have few to tell - few happy ones, at any rate.”

“Tell me how you met the captain.”

Sirris’s breath hitches at the memory of that day. She cannot think of it without a twist of shame for everything that has happened since, but it is still the most precious memory she possesses, its awe undimmed. Sirris was reborn that day.

Any other time, she would not have shared this sacred, private tale with Amalie. As it is, Sirris forfeited her privacy hours ago when she wept into her knees in front of a junior knight. There is little point trying to salvage it now. Amalie has already seen through her mask.

“I was very young,” she begins, “when my grandfather recommended me to Master Gwyndolin’s service. Grandfather believed I had promise, though I was yet a child. He ranked highly in the Darkmoon covenant, and so as a favor to him, Master Gwyndolin summoned me to the cathedral for a demonstration of my abilities. He called forth one of his knights to fence with me. I danced for him.”

Sirris had never been so terrified and excited as she was that day. She was exquisitely aware of herself, her feet gliding across marble with every lunge and retreat, her foil clattering against her opponent’s, until at last she slipped into an opening and touched the point to his shoulder. It was not enough to win the duel. She needed three touches for that, and she had no chance of making two more before her much older adversary scored three on her. Still, it was the best she had fought in her young life. Thinking of it now, the weight of exhaustion in Sirris’s limbs lightens.

“What did you think of him?” Amalie asks. She is smiling; perhaps she underwent a similar trial when she became Gwyndolin’s apprentice.

Sirris pictures Gwyndolin as he was then: standing before his four statues with Yorshka beside him, both siblings robed and veiled in white. Pure, untouched, untouchable.

“I thought he was the most beautiful person I had ever seen,” she says.

“So did I. He scared me a little, but…he was kind to me.” 

Again Sirris hears a faint trace of sadness in Amalie’s voice. It is this hint of something deeper, beneath the girl’s indomitable chatter, that convinces her to go on.

“When he was satisfied with my swordplay, he posed me a final test,” Sirris continues. “He beckoned me near to him and bade me hold out my sword. ‘I would have a miracle of thee,’ he said.”

Sirris could recite these words in her sleep. Her heart quickens to recall them. She remembers how she kept her gaze on her estoc, afraid she would faint if she glimpsed Dark Sun Gwyndolin’s eyes beneath his veil.

“I asked which miracle he wished me to perform. He said it was a spell bestowed only upon his knights. I asked him how I could work a miracle whose tale I had not learned. ‘I shall grant thee my magic,’ he said. ‘In return thou must grant me thy faith.’ If my devotion was true, the miracle would awaken in my blade even though I did not know the tale.”

What happened next is engraved on her soul, a source of pride and pain. Sirris laid her estoc ever so gently across Gwyndolin’s gloved palms, half paralyzed with the fear of failure. She need not have worried. Within seconds, divine purple light suffused the blade, traveling up from hilt to point, smoothing away every tiny chip and discoloration in the metal - and with them, young Sirris thought, all the flaws within herself. Tears of wonder ran down her cheeks. She had become something clean and new. 

Although Sirris would not be of age to fight for Gwyndolin for some years yet, they both knew she had a future as a Darkmoon Knight. That day, she and her lord made a miracle together. That day, Sirris fell in love with all her little girl’s heart.

“Afterward, Lady Yorshka told me she had never seen it happen as quickly as it did for me,” Sirris murmurs. And how sorely she failed to live up to that potential.

“I’m not surprised.” Amalie pauses to pant for breath. The tunnel is climbing steeply now, nearing its end. “I’m glad the captain never asked me to do anything like that. I’d have gone out of my mind. He was different when you met him, wasn’t he? Colder.”

“He was very different. Distant, even with his knights. It was years before I earned the honor of seeing his face unveiled. Everything for which you know him now - hunting with us, sharing our moonlight watches, sleeping wherever he happens to fall, calling himself Lin - came after Aldrich and after Fire. I am not certain the change was entirely for the better.”

“He’s happy now.”

“Yes, he is. I will always rejoice in that.” Sirris bites her lip, wondering if she should say the rest aloud. “But calling him Lin, Amalie... It is disrespectful to address a god with such familiarity.”

“If that’s what he wants, wouldn’t it be more disrespectful not to?”

That is a fair point.

“I suppose it-” 

Sirris stops mid-sentence. Somewhere in the course of her story, the tunnel floor has flattened out and turned from dirt to paving stones. Withered plants crunch into dust beneath her feet. She knows these stones, these plants. She knows where this path must end.

They have reached the mouth of the tunnel. Amalie steps outside, saying, “See? I told you,” and when Sirris opens her mouth to stop her, no sound comes out. The long, empty courtyard beyond the tunnel - or rather, the pit where the courtyard once was - has swallowed her voice.

She does not have to look into that great hollow space to see the candles and the bones piled up at one end. The flames reflected in the water. The sheer walls denying escape.

Amalie does look, however, leaning over the edge. “This hole wasn’t here before,” she says, casual and untroubled as always. “There used to be a big tree in this courtyard. The people who lived here would write down things that hurt them or scared them on bits of cloth and hang them from the branches. They said the tree would take their curses away. Maybe it did for a while. Then one day it…got sick.”

“Dunstan killed it,” Sirris says, looking at the stones, at the arches along the walls, anywhere to avoid drawing attention to the gaping void in the ground. 

Amalie grins wolfishly. “He had all the fun.”

“I doubt he considered it so.”

Then Amalie asks the dreaded question: “What’s in this pit?”

“Nothing.” Sirris speaks too quickly, too sharply. Restraint, she tells herself. Be cold as the moon. “A dead end.”

Amalie peers into the depths. “Have you ever gone down there?”

“Of course not. Why would I? There is no way out save by bonfire or homeward bone.” Sirris puts out her arm and pushes Amalie back, away from the edge. “Need I remind you, we have neither.”

“Hm… Shame.”

If Amalie says anything more, Sirris’s ears are closed to it. Sirris is already walking around the perimeter of the courtyard, away from the pit and what it means. Amalie’s boots slap the stones behind her, echoing in the archways and the horrible hole in the ground, as the girl jogs to catch up. Sirris neither stops nor slows down. She needs to get out of here and find a way up to Lothric Castle before this place reveals the truth about her grandfather and his betrayal. In this world of ashes upon ashes, buried secrets have a way of shifting to the surface. Nothing can be trusted to remain hidden.

“Ma’am! What are you afraid of?” Amalie asks, at her elbow now.

Sirris silently condemns herself for being so obvious and walks on. She is outside now, taking the stairs down from the courtyard two at a time. She passes the body of a long-dead Deep evangelist without sparing more than a glance. The ruff around the woman’s flabby neck is insect-gnawed, as are her skirts; the spiked mace beside her is rusting into powder. She is no threat. May she rot alongside her cannibal master.

Sirris breathes easier the further she gets from the hollow. She stops at the end of the walkway leading away from the stairs to assess the environment and let Amalie catch up. The Undead Settlement has not changed much since Sirris’s last visit: places like this, more than any great hall or fortress, could outlast the end of the world. Ahead of her, alleys wind between ramshackle buildings teetering at odd angles, too tall and rickety to stand straight. There are plenty of blind corners and doorways where foes might lurk. 

Sirris calls Gwyndolin’s face to mind, ready to enchant her estoc with his miracle. If this village is not as deserted as it appears, she will be -

Somewhere behind her, Amalie screams. 

Sirris whirls around in time to see a wave of blackflame ripple across the stone walkway, searing the dead grass to ash. 

She shouts her junior’s name in a tone halfway between exasperation and fear. Her mind races through the possibilities. Amalie cannot have been attacked; there were no enemies in the courtyard or around it. Besides, that was not a scream of terror. That was raw anguish and hate.

Sirris runs back along the walkway as fast as her tired legs will carry her, hand on the hilt of her estoc, expecting anything. When she reaches the base of the stairs, she finds Amalie standing over the dead evangelist, now reduced to ashes. Both her clenched fists are alight with blackflame. Her eyes are chips of obsidian. She is shaking. Tears glint on her cheeks.

“Was that not a bit excessive? This servant of Aldrich died long ago,” Sirris says.

Amalie does not take her eyes from the pile of powder at her feet. “I don’t care,” she says in a tight, brittle voice Sirris has never heard before. “She should burn for what she did to the people here. ‘Cleanse the bastard’s curse’ - what does that mean, anyway? How can you cleanse Fire with fire? It doesn’t make sense!”

Sirris hesitates, not knowing what to say. She has seen Amalie unpredictable and volatile many a time, but never so angry.

She tries to soften her voice. “Of course it doesn’t make sense. This woman never intended to cleanse anyone. She sought sacrifices for the devourer, no more.”

“It’s her fault! Her and the others, they made me what I -”

Amalie catches herself with a hitching breath. Some of the fury drains from her face, but not the grief.

“Seems it’s my turn to cry now, ma’am,” she says with a helpless smile.

She staggers a step forward, and her head falls onto Sirris’s shoulder.

Sirris stiffens. She rarely shares physical comfort with anyone, least of all a distraught young woman who just set a large swath of grass on fire. The Darkmoon virtues do not include softness.

It would be poor form, however, to let Amalie stand here and sob after all the aid she’s given Sirris thus far. One good turn deserves another, whatever Sirris’s misgivings.

So she holds Amalie gently by her shaking shoulders until the flames in her fists go out.

~~~

Yorshka might have known things would go wrong. Wrongness is festering all around: the giant mosquitoes, the rotten blood, lonely Friede and the dying corvians for whom Yorshka can do nothing… It was only a matter of time before it infected her and her companions too.

It begins with the branches. 

The greatwolf clears a path down the side of the chasm beneath Friede’s church. Leaping down through the lattice of thick boughs, it picks up the heavily armed knights guarding the branches with greatbow and axe and tosses them aside like toys. 

Needless to say, the three travelers from beyond the painting cannot match this display of effortless predatory power. 

Yorshka’s descent is passable. She is light on her feet and trained by the Omen children of Leyndell in the art of climbing up and down structures that really aren’t meant for climbing. She gives thanks she thought to wear Eira’s sturdy combat leathers rather than her usual skirts. She could never have dropped between these branches without tangling her feet or tail in her hem.

Gwyndolin and Dunstan are less fortunate. With his weak legs, Gwyndolin is ill-equipped to make the climb down himself. Dunstan deems it best to carry him on his back, which shames Gwyndolin to no end. Yorshka knows this will only bring trouble: shame has always made her brother bitter. 

She is right to fear. As she watches her brother and the Unkindled descend the last few boughs, she catches the end of a heated argument:

“…breathing so slowly when you were sleeping before.”

“Is this really so dire a portent as to warrant two of thy warnings in as many hours? Do not all living creatures breathe slowly in their sleep?” 

“Not like this. I thought your heart had stopped! Did you ever consider there might be something wrong with it?”

“Why should there be?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Lin. You’ve only spent half your life breaking your body, and you’re not young anymore.”

By now Dunstan has touched the frozen lake at the bottom of the chasm. Gwyndolin lets himself down from the Unkindled’s back with obvious irritation and goes right on arguing. He does not so much as glance at Yorshka.

“Sayest thou I am an invalid?” he demands, hands on hips, eyes flashing.

Dunstan folds his own arms in return. “No, I’m only saying you should mind your health so your sister doesn’t have to watch you die before your time.”

“She will not. I am not weak, and I am not afraid.”

“No? Then why did you wander into my house a few nights before we left Irithyll and ask me to talk to you until you fell asleep?”

Gwyndolin inhales sharply. “Thou’rt hateful.”

Dunstan’s regret is immediate and obvious. He looks dumbstruck, as though he cannot believe the words that just emerged from his mouth were his own. “Lin, I…I don’t know why I said that. You’re welcome in my house.”

To this Gwyndolin makes no reply. The hurt in his eyes does not fade.

The greatwolf leads them across the lake. It is a beautiful place, brilliant blue and free of rot. Instead of pebbles, myriads of ice crystals line the shore. Passing them, Yorshka sees herself reflected in hundreds of facets. Sometimes her face is her own. Sometimes it is her mother’s, sometimes the face of the dragon girl from her dreams.

Only once does Yorshka look at the tower behind her, and only to confirm that its rounded walls and crumbling arches are the same as she remembers. Though she feels the greatwolf’s uncanny perception on her, silently asking whether she desires to visit her old home, she does not look a second time. Her mother’s voice is in her ear, whispering Not yet, child. Yorshka senses that something will change if she climbs those half-forgotten steps. She will change. She will close one door and open another: two irrevocable acts, both of which she fears. She is not ready. It is not time.

And if such a transition does await her atop Priscilla’s tower, Yorshka does not want to undertake it like this, with her companions still arguing. Their conversation has turned to the frightful suggestion Dunstan made in Friede’s church: that perhaps something other than firelinking is responsible for the ash place at world’s end.

“It cannot be so, Unkindled. Naught but firelinking sustained unto the bitterest end could produce the ashen deserts I saw in dreams.”

“I’m telling you, Dark burns too!”

“Not enough.”

“Not enough now. Just listen, will you? Dark on its own is like smoke. Hold it back for too long and it turns into water - that’s the Deep. But let it go wild, let it pile up without Fire to balance it, and maybe it turns into fire itself.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“Then how do you explain blackflame? It ain’t normal pyromancy. It comes from the abyss. You know what’s in the abyss? A lot of Dark without Fire to balance it.”

Back and forth they go this way. They are heedless of the tree-women lining both sides of the narrow canyon that leads away from the lake. Yorshka is not. She looks up at every one she passes, at their hair and their wings and their faces so like Sulyvahn’s, and shivers with dread. Beside her, the greatwolf growls without cease.

When the canyon widens, it brings no relief. On the right side are more birch-women, on the left a foul patch of blood and maggoty rot. It is the biggest such mire Yorshka has yet seen, big enough for three mosquitos to feed upon. Their buzzing wings make her feel sick. She cannot bear to look at them, sucking up the painting’s waning life to swell their own bellies. They remind her of Aldrich.

And Yorshka can do nothing to stop them. Like she can do nothing to save Friede and the corvians.

Dunstan slides his claymore from his back and advances on the nearest mosquito. His boots sink to the ankles in blood and rotten snow. 

“Think about it, Lin,” he says. “We blame Fire for everything, but maybe no Fire is just as bad.”

The last few words turn to a snarl as Dunstan cleaves through the mosquito’s bloated abdomen in one vicious stroke. The vile creature falls writhing out of the air. Blood sprays across the ground - across Yorshka’s chest and the lower half of her face. It’s much cooler than it should be, sickeningly so. She struggles not to gag.

Gwyndolin wheels on Dunstan. “Unkindled!”

Dunstan flicks his blade clean. “What, should I have let it drink your sister’s blood instead?”

Yorshka feels ready to explode. She cannot stand to see two people she loves fight like this, least of all when they are surrounded by enemies, and she can do nothing to stop them. Can they not see the danger all around them? This path is the only way out of the canyon, and it is riddled with birch-women.

She wipes the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. “Stop it, stop it, please! We must leave this place! I fear we…”

The tree beside Yorshka creaks. Slowly, very slowly, its wings bend forward, reaching for Gwyndolin. 

He is still glaring at Dunstan. He does not see. He thinks the trees will not come to life while the greatwolf is near. Maybe the greatwolf thinks so too.

Yorshka does not wait. Before Gwyndolin can turn, even before the wolf can spring into motion, she throws herself at her brother and pushes him out of the way with all her strength. They topple to the ground together, limbs tangling. There is another horrid creak, louder now, then a wet thud and Dunstan’s expulsion of breath.

Beside Yorshka, Gwyndolin scrambles to his friend’s aid, argument forgotten. She keeps her face pressed to the snow. If she looks up, she knows she will see Dunstan’s body dangling from the tree. His blood will drip down to join that seeping out of the painting. By all the gods, this was not what she wanted! First she got her brother poisoned, and now this - why is it that she always hurts the people she loves most?

I am not to blame, she chants in her mind. The mantra is a feeble shield against the sounds of battle raging beyond Yorshka’s closed eyes. The rush of sorcery and pyromancy, the greatwolf snarling, feet churning the snow. A terrible drawn-out shriek. Ragged breathing, Gwyndolin threatening Dunstan with all manner of curses should he have the gall to die. The thump of the greatwolf’s paws heading away, uphill. More shrieking and snarling, distant this time. 

Gwyndolin’s hands grasp Yorshka’s shoulders and lift her none too gently. “Up, my love. We cannot linger here.”

Yorshka has only seconds to brace herself before Gwyndolin sets her on her feet. When she opens her eyes, what she sees almost knocks her back down. Her brother is supporting Dunstan, who is bleeding freely from a constellation of punctures in his torso. The Unkindled’s face is white and drawn with pain. Meanwhile, uphill, all the birch-women have woken, tiny flames igniting at the tips of their branches. The greatwolf is tearing them apart with teeth and claws. The winter air rings with shrieks and splintering wood.

“Forgive me,” Yorshka begs the Unkindled and the wolf. She can hardly speak, her chest aches so. “I never meant for this-”

“It’s all right, lass,” Dunstan pants. “Better I get hit than you or Lin. I see Morgott got some reflexes into you.”

He coughs a mouthful of blood onto the snow. It is so awfully bright, much brighter than the blighted red fluid the mosquitos are feeding on.

“Enough heroics,” Gwyndolin says tightly. “The greatwolf maketh safe our way through the trees. Let us not squander it while ‘tis ours.”

He tugs Yorshka towards the hill with his free hand. She can only follow.

Out of the canyon and up the slope they climb. Yorshka is half blinded by tears. Dunstan is lurching beneath Gwyndolin’s arm and leaving a trail of ruby droplets behind him. The greatwolf is still fighting fiercely, ripping off branches and scattering them like kindling. Not a single wound mars its white fur. It is too fast for its foes - and yet there are so many of them! Yorshka can barely hear her own wracking sobs over the din. She claps her hands to her ears to block out the birch-women’s screams and staggers on.

The wolf meets her gaze just once. With its penetrating eyes it promises her that this is not the end: they will meet again before Yorshka’s time in Ariandel is done.

At the top of the slope, Yorshka catches a moment’s glimpse of stone buildings with shingled roofs clustered in a hollow a short way below. Then all at once, Gwyndolin’s legs fold under Dunstan’s weight. The Unkindled and the god collapse and tumble down the other side of the hill, head over heels, limp as masterless dolls.

With a wordless cry, Yorshka skids down the slope after them. She drags her tail behind her in the snow to rudder herself and somehow manages to stay upright. At the bottom, she sinks down beside her companions. Dunstan is curled around his wounded torso and chuckling humorlessly to himself as if to say, What else is going to go wrong today? Nearby, Gwyndolin has pushed himself to his knees. One of his hands rests on Dunstan’s shoulder, but his gaze is fixed on the settlement just below.

Before Yorshka can utter a word, he says, “Turn away.” His voice is flat and cold: his “do not argue” voice.

But Yorshka cannot turn away. The wrongness here is a miasma, and it demands she breathe it in and bear witness.

Beneath the ledge on which she and her companions sit, a scene of decay unfolds. The settlement ahead is ringed by a repellent moat of blood and rot. Rocks and bits of debris litter the stagnant liquid. Then some of them begin to crawl, and Yorshka realizes they are not rocks but corvians. Filth cakes their legs and tails. Their eyes are milky blind. Above this degradation, a much larger corvian perches on the stone bridge into the village. This one is not dying. This one is armored and cloaked in fine fabric, and its feathers are shining black. Metal glints beneath its cloak.

As Yorshka watches, the creature snaps open twin sets of needle-thin knives. It leans forward, poised to plunge down on its kin foundering in the moat.

Within Yorshka, horror at last boils over. She screams.

The corvian’s head whips around. Sharp-tipped beak and beetle-black eyes fix on Yorshka and her companions. Then the great bird propels itself up from the bridge and angles into a dive, and Yorshka knows she has just made another awful mistake.

The clash ensues as flashes of violence. One image follows on the heels of another in rapid succession, like a brutal magic lantern show.

Catalyst in hand, Gwyndolin leaps to his feet - or tries to. His right ankle bends beneath him. He crumples back into the snow, hissing through his teeth with sudden pain. At the same moment, in a display of resilience only an Unkindled could muster, Dunstan scrabbles up, plants his feet, and holds his claymore out in front of him. The diving corvian collides with the flat of the blade. Sparks fly where its knives meet Dunstan’s steel. Metal screeches on metal, and Yorshka has to press her hands to her ears again. Her eyes flit from Dunstan’s feet sliding in the snow to the blood dripping from his punctured chest to his straining, shaking arms. She cannot breathe. She feels as though her chest, too, is full of bloody wounds.

Just when she thinks the corvian’s knives must surely drive into Dunstan’s heart, a barrage of turquoise magic sweeps overhead. Gwyndolin has blinked away to the base of the hill he and Dunstan fell down moments ago. He is crouched on one knee, slinging spell after spell from his blazing catalyst. Stars hail down on the corvian. 

Shrieking at this new assault, the bird breaks away from Dunstan and hops backwards on spindly legs. To no avail: Gwyndolin’s magical bombardment intensifies, so dazzling that Yorshka has to squint. A final salvo of three deep purple rocks smashes into the corvian and forces it to the ground. Before it can rise, Dunstan falls upon it, leaning all his weight on his claymore. The blade sinks through the corvian’s body. The tip emerges bloody underneath it. With a last guttural rattle, the creature dies.

In the deafening silence, the battle plays itself out again and again behind Yorshka’s eyes. Her memory fixes on Dunstan’s shaking arms. Had he yielded just an inch more, the corvian’s knives would have slipped between his ribs. And it would have been Yorshka’s fault. She wraps her arms around herself and begins to tremble, her breath puffing white from her lips.

Dunstan slumps onto his back. His face is as gray as the ash from which the bells called him. He does not bother to wrench his weapon free from the corvian’s body.

This more than anything pulls Yorshka from her tormented stupor. She is a healer. She holds the hands of the suffering. That is her gift. Her work begins where Dunstan’s ends.

With a great effort, she swallows the fresh sobs building in her throat and crawls to Dunstan’s side. She puts her head on his shoulder and wills her healing to fill up her whole body. Dunstan will need it all. Golden light wells up beneath Yorshka’s skin, visible even through her closed eyelids. She feels Dunstan’s heart steady.

He ruffles Yorshka’s hair with one feeble hand. “All right, lass?”

That almost looses Yorshka’s tears. “‘Tis my fault,” she whispers. “I was foolish to scream.”

“This place would make anyone scream.”

A rustle nearby tells Yorshka that Gwyndolin has limped over to them and knelt down. “I bless thy stubborn spirit, friend,” he says, breathless and genuinely impressed. “To summon such strength, wounded as thou art… Extraordinary. Are all Unkindled so difficult to fell?”

“Someone had to stop that corvian, and you weren’t going to do it alone. Did you really hurt your ankle falling down the hill?”

“‘Twould seem so.” 

“Unbelievable.” There is affection in Dunstan’s voice.

“Indeed.”

“Only you, Lin.”

“How fortunate for thee my sister is with us. Surely thou’rt injured inside thy body.”

Yorshka squeezes her eyes tighter against her tears. She deserves no such commendation; healing is the least she can do.

“Wouldn’t be the first time. If I had a coin for every time my organs have been destroyed, I’d want for nothing. That’s what bonfires are for.”

“Will Yorshka’s arts keep thee until we find one?”

“I think so. I’ve had worse than being impaled by a tree.” Dunstan squeezes Yorshka’s shoulder. There is more strength in his fingers now. “Now, when the greatwood in the Undead Settlement sat on me - that was a rotten day.”

“Spare us yet another telling of this tale, I beg of thee.”

Dunstan chuckles beneath Yorshka’s cheek. She knows he is trying to console her, which cannot be easy for him given the pain he is in and the blood he has lost. Even Unkindled have limits. These thoughts set her shaking all over again. Dunstan is so brave, and she is not. She almost got him killed.

Gwyndolin strokes her hair, like he did when she was small. “Hush, dearest one.”

Dunstan pats her shoulder. “You saved your brother’s life, and now mine.”

“Thou hast no cause for shame.”

“But spare some magic for Lin, eh?”

Despite these reassurances, Yorshka feels herself slipping. The mosquito’s blood has dried itchy on her face, and the corvians in the moat are croaking in their death throes, and there are so many, too many for her to comfort. She can do nothing to ease their hurt. It is so much worse than anything she ever saw on an ash-worm hunt. She isn’t ready. She will never find the courage to climb her mother’s tower and face whatever transformation awaits her there…

Narrow the world and narrow thy fear, Morgott says in her mind. Use what thou art given.

She can still do something for Dunstan. Whatever her inadequacies, she is here, with healing and a heart beating beneath her hands.

Yorshka takes a breath of cold and light, rot and blood.

“Of course,” she says. 

Chapter Text

Yorshka’s healing is good enough that Dunstan can walk on his own - not very fast and not very far, but enough to find a bonfire. He senses he will not have to look hard. If the bonfires are indeed bookmarks in a story meant to convince the three travelers to burn Ariandel, then this slaughtered settlement is the perfect place for one. Certainly the corvians crawling through the muck and vomiting poison make a visceral statement as to the necessity of fire. 

In that regard, Dunstan is more worried about Yorshka than himself. When he leaves her, she is trembling and gray with shock, looking worse than Dunstan feels. She has never seen cruelty and degradation on this scale. Whatever she imagined she would find when she came to Ariandel to light a flame of renewal, it cannot have been this. Her self-regard is fragile enough at the best of times; it will do her no good to be faced with far more suffering than she can heal.

Gwyndolin stays behind with her. She insists on providing succor to the corvians in the moat, and although all his instincts scream against it, Gwyndolin allows her to do so. If she believes her purpose is down there with those wretched, forsaken creatures, he will not deny it to her.

He posts himself on the bridge into the settlement, where he can keep a lookout for more corvian warriors, and watches his sister minister to the dying. 

Up to her calves in filthy reddish water, Yorshka moves from corvian to corvian in search of those still living. When she finds them, she kneels and pillows their shrunken heads in her lap and rings her chime over them. Their pitiful croaks and twitchings cease. Their bodies relax into their final sleep, delivered from the painful ends their larger, fiercer brethren would have inflicted on them. Their last moments are defined instead by gentleness.

Witnessing all this, Gwyndolin wonders why his sister doubts herself so. He would not have the stomach to kneel in water that reminds him of Aldrich’s slime and hold diseased bodies in his arms. Yorshka is stronger than he.

He hurts for her nonetheless. He can see her growing weaker with each corvian she visits, rising more slowly from her knees, stumbling when she walks. Each of her faltering steps sinks teeth into his heart. He thinks he may have to put a binding spell on himself to keep from jumping off the bridge, sprained ankle be damned, and pulling Yorshka out of the moat.

When she has done all she can, Yorshka sinks to her knees for the last time. She crawls onto dry land, lays her head on a patch of spongy rot, and goes still.

Gwyndolin sets fire to his restraint. 

He forgets the pain in his ankle as he crosses the bridge and down to the moat. His limp all but disappears, such is his urgency. When he reaches Yorshka, he scoops her into his arms and cradles her head close, just as she did for the corvians. Her skin is cold and clammy. Yorshka is never cold. She must have used too much magic too fast. She is not accustomed, as Gwyndolin and his knights are, to expending large amounts of mana at once.

Her eyelids flutter and her dazed eyes find Gwyndolin’s. “Be not vexed with me,” she says, her voice a slow, thick murmur. “I must use what I am given.”

“Oh, dearest one…” Gwyndolin has to look away so Yorshka will not see his face twist.

She reaches for his ankle. “Thou’rt hurt.”

He catches hold of her hand. “Leave it be. ‘Twill keep.” The words come rough with emotion. “Rest now. Dunstan will return to us when the bonfire he seeketh is found, and then we will see thee warm.”

Yorshka mutters something that sounds like “forgive me”, and then her head lolls against Gwyndolin’s chest.

Gwyndolin pulls Yorshka closer, bowing his head to kiss the top of hers. He never should have brought her here; she was not ready to see these horrible things. “Nay, child. ‘Tis I who must ask forgiveness of thee.”

Yorshka makes a small, miserable noise.

“Hush thee. I am here. Rest.”

Yorshka shivers and nuzzles her face into Gwyndolin’s chest. Gwyndolin rocks her like he did when she was small and troubled by nightmares. 

The snow drifts down like a shroud.

~~~

Dunstan decides the corvian settlement must have been all right once upon a time. If he ignores the rot and the scent of death - and granted, that’s not easy to do - he can see shadows of what it was like before it all went wrong. His builder’s eye lingers over the structures, which are stone-built with neat shingled roofs. Unlike the Undead villages through which Dunstan has passed on his journeys, this place isn’t ramshackle in the least. There is craftsmanship here.

The village is arranged like the spokes of a wheel, with a watchtower at the end of each spoke, some of them connected by bridges. Smaller domestic buildings cluster at the feet of these towers. The paths between them are tidy even now, with the rot encroaching its fungal tendrils. More out of exhaustion than any real intuition, Dunstan chooses the nearest, shortest one. 

It leads him to a ladder, at the top of which, on a sturdy foundation, is a house. 

The first thing Dunstan notices upon letting himself in is that the place is surprisingly clean. The stone floors in both small rooms have been swept bare, and the pots and water pump on the countertop show no signs of rust. There’s no rot anywhere either, not a trace.

The second thing Dunstan notices is the bonfire flickering merrily in the second small room. The ache of his wounds redoubles in anticipation of healing.

The third thing he notices - and almost doesn’t notice at all, so well does the object of his scrutiny blend into the shadows - is a corvian. He is just as withered as his fellows, yet Dunstan sees right away that there is still sentience in his feathered body. He is standing upright in a corner by his kitchen counter, for all the world as though he is about to make a bowl of soup. 

Dunstan lifts his hands to show he does not intend aggression. “I’m only here to use the bonfire. Then I’ll let you be.”

The corvian’s cloudy, bulging eyes widen even further. “An Unkindled?” he says. His voice is reedy but entirely lucid. “Ah, good ashen one, long have we awaited the coming of one of your kindred!”

And he offers Dunstan a bowl of soup.

Once Dunstan obtains permission for Gwyndolin and Yorshka to rest at the corvian’s house, it’s a short walk back to the moat where he left his companions. He welcomes the chance to walk. As always, the bonfire has left his body feeling ever so slightly off. He knows from experience that it will take a few minutes of exertion for the sensation of his insides knitting back together to fade. For now, his torso is still full of uncomfortable tuggings.

Dunstan allowed himself to relax in the corvian’s house, but he tenses once more when he sees Gwyndolin sitting on the shore of the moat. Yorshka is curled up in his arms. The girl is paler than ever, her skin almost translucent. Even her tail seems to have lost some of its sheen.

“What happened?” Dunstan asks, kneeling down. 

“She expended far too much magic in too short a time,” Gwyndolin says. Though his tone is carefully controlled, his eyes never leave his sister, and that betrays his anxiety. “She is unaccustomed to such exertions.”

“She’ll be all right, though?”

“Aye, if thou wilt bear her to a warm place where she may rest.”

“If I will?” 

Gwyndolin glances at his injured ankle with naked disgust.

“You mean she didn’t heal you?” Dunstan asks.

“She is spent. I will not permit her to lay hands upon me until she is recovered.”

Dunstan has to swallow a retort. Gwyndolin is the soul of practicality save where Yorshka is concerned; then he loses all his good sense.

“Well, what are you going to do until then, find a stick to lean on?” 

Gwyndolin sets his shoulders grimly. “If I must.”

“And what if you have to fight?”

“Then I must blink, Unkindled, and leave the melee to thee.”

Dunstan sighs. There’s no point in arguing with Gwyndolin most of the time, and certainly not when he’s like this.

“All right. Give her to me.”

Gwyndolin relinquishes his hold on Yorshka by inches. When Dunstan at last lifts the girl onto his back, Gwyndolin’s hand lingers close to hers.

The corvian settler in the house makes low clucking noises at the sight of Yorshka. “Poor child. You are Priscilla’s blood, I suppose, returned to witness your homeland’s decay. Forgive us. Were it in our power, we would have burned Ariandel long ago and spared you the sight of this ruin.”

He indicates with one clawed hand what Dunstan can only call a nest in the corner of the bonfire room. It is made of sticks, woven through with feathers and fraying pieces of fabric. Dunstan lays Yorshka down in this makeshift bed and covers her as best he can. He does not like the way she is shivering. With luck the bonfire will warm her, though it will not provide her healing.

With his precious burden laid down, Dunstan realizes for the first time that Gwyndolin is not with him. He finds the god waiting at the base of the ladder up to the house, glaring at the wood and ropes.

“You can’t climb up?” Dunstan asks.

“I…”

“Never mind. Don’t twist your ankle any worse. Here.” Dunstan lies down on the stones and leans over the edge, holding out his hands. 

Gwyndolin looks like he would sooner cut off Dunstan’s hands than take them. Only after much scoffing and sighing does necessity prevail over shame. Gwyndolin puts his hands in Dunstan’s and allows the Unkindled to hoist him up.

It’s an undignified affair that culminates in Gwyndolin clambering over the edge of the house’s foundation on hands and knees. When he tries to stand, his ankle refuses to take his weight any longer. Dunstan has to support him with an arm around his waist. By the time he has hobbled into the house, the god is in a foul, brittle mood.

“I sense fire in you,” the corvian settler ventures, bowing low. “May you bless us with flame, young one.”

Gwyndolin hardly acknowledges him. “I am no ‘young one.’ I have seen ages.”

“And yet to my eye you look not a day over twenty-five. How extraordinary!”

“Don’t be rude, Lin,” Dunstan says. “He’s offered us food and rest.”

Gwyndolin limps to Yorshka’s nest and lowers himself gingerly down beside her. “What food can there be in this place that is not poison?”

“I may yet surprise you, master,” the corvian says, and Dunstan could swear he winks.

The soup really is all right. There isn’t much to it, but the vegetables taste blessedly ordinary. The corvian must have hoarded them away before everything began to rot. That’s all Dunstan can ask for.

Gwyndolin does not accept a bowl for himself. He does take one for Yorshka, however, and spends long minutes lifting her head and tilting careful mouthfuls down her throat. Dunstan finds this display of tenderness too private and painful to watch for long. It does not escape him that he may one day have to care for his child-to-be this way.

The corvian is quiet while his guests eat, leaning against his kitchen counter and clacking his beak softly to himself. Dunstan wonders what he has seen and what he knows. He has already suggested that he wants Ariandel to burn, which makes him an ally. This seems as good a time as any to collect some information.

Dunstan sits down against the wall opposite Gwyndolin and Yorshka. “You said you’ve been waiting for an Unkindled like me,” he says to the corvian. “Why?”

The corvian blinks his huge eyes as if this is obvious. “Ash kindles flame, and my lady must see fire.”

“Lady Friede?”

“The witch? Nay.” The last word becomes a harsh squawk. “She entranced our good father and buried Ariandel’s flame, though we were resolved to burn. Now we rot.”

“Then who is your lady?”

“The painter, of course. The renewer of Ariandel.”

“And where is she?”

“Taken. Hidden. We know not where. Although…” The corvian shuffles to the door with a clack of talons on stone and peers out at the charnel scene beyond. “Given the knights’ presence here, I suspect she is close.”

“The knights? You mean the big corvians?”

“Vile beasts who slay their own kin for love of Friede.” The corvian drops his clawed hand from the doorframe and turns back to face the interior of the house. His gaze falls on Gwyndolin. “You see, fire child? This world is no different from your own. Your gods will not extinguish a flame, and ours will not light one. Ruinous acts, both.”

At this Gwyndolin gets to his feet with a pained grimace. Without a word, he limps to the door and disappears outside.

Dunstan wills himself to be patient.

“Don’t mind him,” he says to the corvian. “He’s afraid.”

“As well he should be, and you also,” the frail old bird murmurs. “There is danger here for those touched by fire.”

“So we’ve heard. What is this danger? Well, besides the wolves and the trees and the insects and the corvian knights.”

The corvian does not answer, nor does he need to. Dunstan can work it out for himself: if Friede really did hide Ariandel’s flame, she will not look kindly on those trying to find it.

“One other thing,” Dunstan says. “Do you know a man named Gael?”

“Gael? Oh, yes. He is not here. He has not been here for some time. What would you have of him?”

This is disappointing. “He’s the one who called me here. I think he might know something about the end of the world - my world, not this one.”

The corvian looks hard at Dunstan, harder than eyes full of cataracts have any right to do. 

“Yes, Gael would know about that.”

That’s enough mystery for Dunstan’s taste. “Thank you. You’ve been helpful,” he says, and steps outside.

Gwyndolin is standing near the top of the ladder, arms wrapped around himself. His gaze passes listlessly over the bloody moat and the dead corvians within. He looks wearier and older than at any other stage of this journey.

Dunstan puts a hand on his arm. “Lin. Come back inside and eat.”

“Leave me be.”

“Is standing in the cold going to make you feel better?”

Gwyndolin shrugs off Dunstan’s hand with sudden vehemence. “The old corvian spoke truly: this land is no different from our own.”

Dunstan does not like the sound of that. “Of course it ain’t. You think the gods of Anor Londo were the only ones who ever wanted to hold on to what they had? That’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s as true here as it was in Lordran.”

“Then what good this journey?” Gwyndolin turns to Dunstan, and his pale eyes are hard with pain. “What good our journey to the kiln, if thy notion of Dark-linking be true? Link the flame, hide the flame, extinguish the flame - ‘tis no matter. ‘Twill always end in death and rot and ash.”

Although Dunstan knows Gwyndolin is speaking out of strain and fatigue, not sincerity, instinctive unease crawls up his spine. That was hollowing talk.

“You don’t believe that. You wouldn’t have gone to the kiln if you believed that. You’re tired and scared and this place is getting to you. That’s why you’re talking this way.”

Gwyndolin leans back against the doorframe and closes his eyes. “I know it. Pay me no heed.”

Dunstan is more relieved than he should be to hear Gwyndolin say that. “Listen, Lin. If that old bird is right and there will always be folk who destroy everything rather than let go…then that means there will always be folk like us too. Folk who will give the world a chance. Your sister knows it. That’s why she’s here: to burn Ariandel so a new world can have a chance.”

“My sister.” Gwyndolin exhales a stiff little breath. “I am afeared for her.”

“I can see that.”

“I thought her settled and happy, tending her flowers and serving as healer to Irithyll’s hunters. ‘Tis good work, necessary work. I thought at last she knew her worth. But see her now, casting herself into the teeth of wolves and draining herself dry tending to the dying. Why go to such lengths, if not to prove she can be useful?”

Gwyndolin spits the last word like a curse. Dunstan knows how he hates it. That word stole much of his life, along with “duty.” 

“She was strange to me even before we departed Irithyll,” Gwyndolin goes on in a rush. Dunstan seems to have broken a dam. “Her waking dreams of Ariandel, her mother’s voice whispering in her ear… She parried Morgott without warning whilst she trained one morning, sayeth Eira.”

Dunstan frowns. He can’t imagine insubstantial Yorshka parrying anyone, least of all Morgott. “Did Eira say why?”

“Morgott’s sword affrighted her. She saw in its shape the finger Sulyvahn gave to her.”

“That could be.” And yet something about this explanation doesn’t seem quite right.

Gwyndolin runs his hands through his silver hair. “What can it all mean?” he asks, with a note of pleading in his voice. “What seeketh she to prove by such behavior? Knoweth she not that I love her above all else?”

Dunstan does not answer right away. Wheels are turning in his mind, analyzing all the things Gwyndolin has described: Yorshka’s visions of her mother, her alliance with the greatwolf, her desire to comfort the corvians, even her attempted parry. He arrives at the suspicion that none of this is incidental. 

“Unless you’re wrong,” he says slowly. “What about this: Yorshka isn’t trying to prove herself to you. She’s trying to prove herself to herself. She’s getting herself ready for something.”

The lines of strain around Gwyndolin’s eyes only deepen. “For what? For the burning of Ariandel?”

Dunstan shrugs. “Don’t know. Yorshka might not know herself. Whatever it is, that wolf is protecting her for a reason, and it’s not just because she smells like Madoc. If that were a normal wolf, maybe. But it ain’t.”

“And how am I to protect her, Unkindled?”

“Let her rest here for a while, to start. You and I can find the painter while Yorshka gets her strength back.”

“And leave her with naught but a feeble corvian to defend her?”

Dunstan thinks of the bird-creature’s cryptic hints and store of fresh food. “If he’s lasted this long without dying or losing his mind, he must know what he’s doing.”

Gwyndolin’s remaining resolve leaves him all at once. He curls inward on himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Very well. I have no will to resist thee.”

“And Dark help you…” Dunstan claps Gwyndolin on the shoulder. “…if you have to fight on that ankle.”

~~~

“Tarnished.”

“Hm?”

“What is our purpose here?”

Eira opens one eye. Nothing has changed. She is still sitting in the small chapel redolent of wood smoke and incense. Censers and ritual vessels are scattered across the floor, washed out in the silver torchlight. The lines of draconic figures seated cross-legged along the walls have not moved an inch. They are as silent as ever, hands in their laps, horned reptilian heads bowed. From the shape of their torsos, Eira thinks they were human once. Now they are apparently trying to transcend.

She has been trying to transcend with them. So far nothing has happened. Her mind remains stubbornly blank.

“I just thought I might hear something if I prayed with them,” she whispers to Morgott, who is seated on her right. “Some word from Lin’s brother. Something that might help me find the bell where I’m supposed to meet him.”

The Omen King does not open his own eye in response. He seems to feel right at home in this place of meditation. Although his left hand remains open and ready to conjure a weapon, his tail is folded placidly around his legs and his lined face is relaxed. Perhaps this chapel reminds him of the Erdtree Sanctuary. Or perhaps he is communing with his dragon kindred, teaching himself to embrace his place among them.

“Oft are belfries set high above their surrounds,” he murmurs without urgency. “The sensible course is to climb.”

“We’ve been climbing.”

Eira and Morgott have traveled nowhere but upwards since their battle with the ancient wyvern on the avenue. They have seen no belfries, only endless torchlit corridors, crumbling pillars, and scaffolding open to the black abyss below. How can a city that only leads one way - up - be such a maze? 

They haven’t encountered anyone who could be mistaken for a son of Gwyn, either. Mostly, there have been more man-serpents: man-serpents with daggers, man-serpents with axes, man-serpents with shotels. Their only unusual opponents were the knight who tried to kill Eira for stepping foot in this chapel, and the warrior armored entirely in stone and wielding a club as long as he was tall. As it turned out, his greatshield could not withstand a well-aimed Omen kick. Eira wonders how Morgott didn’t break all his toes. He must have steel bones.

Neither of these aberrant foes was Gwynhael. Gwyn’s firstborn has thus far appeared solely in the form of statues. At least, Eira thinks they are statues of Gwynhael. She doesn’t know who else’s image would be worthy to stand on candle-laden plinths along all the major walkways. She’s stopped by many of them in the course of her upward journey, taking in the wild hair and wide, imposing stance, the broad hands folded around the haft of a swordspear. She has tried to see in this person the man who taught Gwyndolin to wield a bow when everyone else deemed him too weak. She cannot. She sees only a storm’s fierceness.

“Perhaps we must climb further,” Morgott suggests in his infuriatingly calm manner.

“I don’t see the use. There’s nothing out there but snake-men and the lizards with rocks on their backs. You know, they make me think of the scarabs at home.”

“What scarabs?”

“You must have seen them! They roll around magic balls of dung with spells and smithing stones in them. Useful little things, if you can catch them.”

“Tarnished, thou’rt telling tales.”

“I’m not! This is why you shouldn’t have locked yourself in Leyndell for hundreds of years. You missed all sorts of things.”

“I am here now, far from Leyndell, am I not?”

Eira relents. “You are. I’m glad you’re with me.”

“Then heed my counsel: we climb further.”

Not wanting to concede to her old rival but lacking any other ideas, Eira looks down at the floor beneath her crossed legs. One of the paving stones nearby is carved with a lotus. With its radiating petals, it’s like a little sun. Eira trails her fingertip around the flower’s circumference, thinking, I’m here, Gwynhael. I’m the one with the red lightning. If you can hear me, could you tell me where to go? Or is finding you part of the test? It is, isn’t it?

And then a thought occurs to her: the sun. The lotus reminds her of the sun.

“Morgott,” she says, louder than she intended.

“Hush. Disturb not the postulants.”

“Morgott,” she whispers, “I think you might be right.”

“Dost thou indeed? This is a momentous occasion.”

Eira elbows him in the side. “I think we need to climb up to the sun - or where the sun would have been, back when there was a sun.”

The tiniest smile lifts the corners of Morgott’s mouth. “So there is good sense in thee after all.”

They rise and leave the chapel in silence so as not to “disturb the postulants.” None of the dragon-folk meditating along the walls so much as turn their heads in their visitors’ direction, however. Eira wonders if, in their quest to transcend mortality, they have also surrendered everything that makes a person alive.

Very little stirs in the corridors outside the chapel. A lone rock lizard comes rolling and growling from behind a pillar, only to plummet off the edge of the walkway when Eira sidesteps it. The ever-present man-serpents seem to have fallen back. The last group of them was in a courtyard before the dragon church: seven or eight of them with weapons of every kind, like a last-ditch effort to impede progress. Now the pillared halls of Archdragon Peak are unsettlingly quiet and empty, as they were just before the ancient wyvern swept down on the avenue. The thin mountain air has taken on a charged, metallic smell.

At last the narrow upward path opens onto a large rectangular plaza. In the darkness, the bleached stones are studded with tiny silver flames like glowworms clinging to cave walls. Torches and candles are more numerous here than anywhere else on the mountain, anchored to each crumbling pillar or shedding wax into the cracks in the pavers. Some of the candles are trickling their substance over the sides of cairns like the ones Eira saw at the base of the mountain. There are far fewer cairns here than there were below. If Morgott is correct and the little piles of stones honor fallen warriors, then not many made it this far, and none of them survived.

At the far end of the plaza, curled into a depression in the mountainside, is the body of the largest dragon Eira has seen outside Farum Azula. Even with its head laid on its clawed feet and its eyes closed forever, it is a fearsome sight. It is armored in stone like its counterparts in the Lands Between. Its wings are formed of overlapping plates as sharply delineated as the lines of a fine sculpture. If it were to lift into the sky, it would almost cover Eira’s field of vision. The dragon-folk seated in meditation around it are as still as it is. Eira dares not approach them for fear they will crumble into dust if her feet brush against them.

Above the dragon’s body, suspended from a sturdy arch, is a great bronze bell. Moonlight - Irithyll’s illusory moonlight, still visible so far from its origin - silvers the metal. Here on this altar at the top of the world, Gwyndolin’s hand touches his brother’s domain. A fitting place for the duel that will see them reunited.

For a long moment, Eira does not move. She softens her breath, quickened by the climb, into little white puffs. She has not felt such palpable holiness since she first stepped into the cavern at the base of the Haligtree. In that place everything was sacred: the snow, the flowers and the water, and most especially the likeness of Miquella into which the roots had grown, its woody hair falling over its face and its head turned aside to look down upon the slumbering Malenia. Eira could not imagine setting foot in that place without Miquella’s permission. To do so, to disturb even a single flower petal, would be sacrilege.

The plaza before her exudes the same sense of solemn anticipation as Elphael. The prayers of the dragon-folk have coalesced over untold ages into a film Eira could almost inhale along with the torch-smoke. Whatever her excitement for the battle and the reunion to come, she is reluctant to break that hush with the thud of her boots on stone.

Beside her, Morgott too is silent. His head is bowed and his sword held point-downward in folded hands, an attitude Eira has only ever seen him affect when standing before the Erdtree. It strikes her that if dragons were indeed the Crucible’s firstborn, this place is as sacred to Morgott as to the dragon-folk seated beneath the bell. This is the temple of his distant kin.

When at last Eira speaks, she speaks of battle: the only subject she feels will not profane this sanctuary.

“Will you second me?” she asks.

Morgott stiffens just enough for Eira to perceive. “Thou need’st no second.”

“But if I can’t win-”

“Thou canst.”

“If I can’t,” Eira presses, reaching up to grip one of Morgott’s hands with both her own, “will you take my place as my second?” 

Morgott brushes a callused thumb over Eira’s knuckles, a glimpse of a paternal manner that began to awaken when he began to accept himself. 

“Always,” he says.

“No matter what happens, no matter what we have to do, we bring Gwynhael home alive.”

“For our outlander.”

“For Lin.”

With that, Eira straightens her back and strides across the courtyard. Morgott follows a pace behind and to the right of her. She does not bow her head. Somehow, it seems more respectful to approach the bell with upright resolve than with meekness. Fear and cowering will not honor the man who called Eira here.

The dragon-folk never turn their heads towards her, yet she feels them watching all the same. Are they praying for her, or for their god? Or are they entirely disinterested in anything but the narrow path they walk to ascension?

Whatever the answer, they do not stop Eira from laying hands on the lever beneath the bell. Its metal surface and clockwork look out of place, a device too mechanical for a land of ascetics that belongs the distant past. It is cold beneath Eira’s fingers. In contrast, Gransax’s bolt is steaming and hissing in her right hand like a dragon’s exhalation.

Her weapon is ready. She is ready. Never once in her life has she looked back once she’s made a decision.

She pulls the lever.

Gears grate somewhere below, sending vibrations through Eira’s hand. Rust trickles dryly to the stones. The wooden braces set into the archway creak. Drawn by an unseen mechanism, the bell swings slowly backwards into position. And then it begins to ring.

It is a sound that could be heard from the Mountaintops of the Giants to the Deeproot Depths, a sound made of metal and time. Each slow, sonorous peal resonates through Eira’s whole body. She feels her heart slow to match the rhythm, commanded by something beyond her own mind. The power in the great bell is calling her unto itself.

Clouds seep up through the paving stones: slate-gray clouds, volatile clouds. For a moment they remind Eira of Aldrich’s mire and its utter disregard for physical boundaries, but no, they are not the same at all. They carry no death-reek, only the crisp, sharp scent of an imminent storm. 

They pool outward like a tide. Ripple by swift ripple, they swallow the plaza in swirling mist until Eira can no longer see the bell or the dragon-folk. Only Morgott’s heavy hand on her shoulder assures her that she is not going to fall. The ground has become a seething sea of vapor, and Eira senses that although she has not moved since pulling the lever, she is now high above the peak, in the roofless airs where dragons fly. The wind picks up and throws her hair back. Rain - or perhaps sparks - nip at her cheeks.

All at once, the bell’s spell releases her heart, and it begins to race. At first she cannot say why. Then, blinking against the wind, she discerns a figure standing in the center of the storm colosseum to which she has been summoned.

He is dressed in a loose-fitting tunic and waistcloth of an antiquated style now worn only by statues of Gwyn. Gold bands gleam dully at his wrists, and a gold breastplate etched with dragon ribs protects his chest. A crown with long, thin points sits at his brow amidst a lion’s mane of white hair. Regal attire - or not quite. The tattered leather sandals on his feet are not those of a prince.

This is the man from the statues. There is no doubt. The sculptors were faithful to every detail, down to the last iridescent blue scale adorning their subject’s sleeves and waist. 

What the statues could not convey is this man’s presence. His height and musculature only account for part of the weight that descends on Eira’s chest at the sight of him. The rest is in his manner. There is neither royal hauteur nor condescension in him, only the coiled calm of a warrior for whom fighting is like breathing. The muscles in his half-bare arms are taut, but not tense. In his right hand he holds a curious weapon, a sword’s shape and a spear’s length, with an easy grip that speaks of long use. 

Eira tries to see his eyes. She has always found that her opponents’ eyes give her hints as to their character and temperament. But she cannot see this man’s. The ragged scarf wrapped around his neck covers all but a slit of his face, and what little skin remains visible is shrouded in shadow. Eira does see, however, that this skin is weathered like old parchment. A natural consequence of the peak’s climate?

Well, never mind the eyes. Eira sees all she needs to see in the man’s attire and bearing: he holds himself like a veteran and wears little defensive clothing. Neither of these observations bodes well for Eira’s victory.

Morgott steps forward a pace, unfazed.

“Wouldst thou challenge Eira, Elden Lord of the Crucible, curse-breaker and dragon-blessed?” he calls into the wind in his clear, ringing voice.

The figure nods.

“And art thou Gwynhael, brother of Gwyndolin of Irithyll?”

This time the man tilts his head to one side, slow as the swing of the great bell.

“What terms wouldst thou lay for this duel?” Morgott asks, in a tone that says he will never approve of any terms that threaten his lord’s life.

Gwyn’s firstborn - it can only be he - turns his swordspear downward into the clouds.

To the ground.

It’s not a voice, but a will projected directly into Eira’s mind. It scrapes against her consciousness. If it were an actual voice, she thinks it would be hoarse.

“To the…ground?” she asks. “You mean the ground right here, or the ground all the way down there?” She gestures vaguely at the hidden mountainside, which she imagines is somewhere far below.

To the ground.

Eira sighs. No matter what Gwynhael means, it’s bad news. He is much taller and most likely stronger than she is; she does not know how she will ever knock him off his feet and keep him down long enough to decide her victory. But what choice does she have? Gwyndolin is relying on her, just as he did when she came to kill Aldrich.

So she echoes Gwynhael’s slow nod. “Accepted. To the ground.”

“Tarnished!” Morgott hisses beside her. 

Eira looks up at him and catches a flicker of worry in his face. “I know. But I’ve got to try.”

This is all the preamble Gwynhael requires. He lifts his swordspear high overhead, and the wind gathers around it with the sound of huge beating wings.

Eira flicks Gransax’s bolt into crackling red life.

She smiles. She does not believe in that smile as much as she usually does, but Gwynhael doesn’t need to know that.

Now, she thinks to him, we dance.

Chapter Text

“Why do we wear veils?”

“Amalie. You are avoiding my question. Why did you set fire to a dead evangelist?”

“I mean it. Why do we wear veils?”

Sirris sits down on the edge of the shingled rooftop, suddenly exhausted. She and her junior have just finished clearing out a pack of thralls, who had claimed this cluster of shanties for their own. The skittering little beasts were as evasive and aggravating as ever. For once Sirris was glad of Amalie’s heavy-handed spellcasting: were she alone, she’d be full of throwing daggers right now. Her estoc is not suited to handling groups of enemies.

She nudges a thrall’s body out of the gutter with her foot, watching the floppy hood flutter like a pennant as it falls to the ground. That makes her feel a little better. 

“The Darkmoon Knights wear veils,” she says, wondering why she is humoring Amalie, “so that all who look upon us may know we are set apart from earthly affairs. Our knighthoods are sacred.”

Amalie’s boots clatter on the shingles as she sits down beside Sirris. “We’re not set apart, though. We eat and sleep and fight and love and live like anyone else. Nothing wrong with that.”

It’s easy for Amalie to say that when she has only ever known Lin, who does all the mundane things she just mentioned and more. She never knew the immaculate, untouchable Dark Sun Gwyndolin on whom Sirris has tried (and failed) to model her behavior. 

“No,” Sirris concedes. “but we are also consecrated to a higher purpose.”

“The defense of the weak and downtrodden.”

Well, at least Amalie remembers her knighthood vows. That’s something. 

“To deliver the gods’ justice and vengeance was our purpose once,” Sirris says, “when there were still gods to serve. In those days the Darkmoon Knights were Lothric’s fiercest and finest. We were an example to all others. We strove to be perfect. Our veils signify that also.”

Amalie cocks her head in a gently scolding way. “We’re still Lothric’s best, but I don’t think the captain expects us to be perfect. Precision and elegance are our words, not perfection.”

“And restraint,” Sirris adds, because Amalie always forgets that one on purpose.

As usual, the girl ignores her. “Anyway,” she says, “you should leave the veil off for a while.”

“It is my uniform; I cannot simply-”

“‘Course you can. Mine already came off during the fight.” 

“Because you didn’t pin it properly. Put it back on.”

“I don’t want to. There’s no one to see us right now, is there?”

And without warning, Amalie reaches up and gently slips both veil and silver circlet from Sirris’s head.

“There,” Amalie says, smiling with far too much satisfaction. “I can see your whole face now. Your hair’s pretty.”

Sirris’s hand flies to the loose strands escaping her bun. “You have no right to remove my sacred accoutrements” would be the appropriate thing to say - the Dark-Sun-Gwyndolin thing to say. But Sirris is so taken aback that she skips straight past anger and lands on bewilderment and all she can manage is, “It’s…dark.”

Like molasses, Hodrick used to say, back when he was still Sirris’s granddad.

Amalie squints at her and hums a little. “It is, and it sets off your eyes.”

Sirris’s eyes are a pale grayish blue she has always liked because it is almost the same color as moonlight on clouds. She feels her cheeks warming despite all her discipline.

“No more of this nonsense,” she says, trying to recover her sternness. “Answer me. Why did you set fire to -”

With another infuriating grin, Amalie hops down from the roof and sets off through the alley between the shanties. She’s still holding Sirris’s veil and circlet.

For a moment Sirris can only sit there, incensed, disbelieving. “Amalie! You are behaving like a child! Gods know why Master Gwyndolin knighted you!”

“With all due respect, ma’am, I think he wants me to take the stick out of your-”

“If you finish that sentence…”

But it’s Sirris, not Amalie, who doesn’t finish her sentence, because Amalie is already walking away down the alley.

Sirris is left sitting stunned on the roof. This has to be the strangest experience she’s ever had, even more so than the day Gwyndolin told her of his intent to snuff the First Flame. How did Amalie go from fighting to…whatever that was…in the span of a few minutes? It’s erratic behavior even by her standards. Surely she cannot still be shaken by her encounter with the evangelist's corpse. A long-deceased witch would not frighten her so.

Sirris drops off the roof and jogs a few paces to close the distance with Amalie. Her legs are still sore from her averted drowning, but she’s not about to let her junior see that.

She catches up with Amalie in a stable where pack animals must have been kept in happier times. The stalls are full of hay decomposing into soil and a thick, musty miasma. Pitchforks and water buckets lean rustily against the walls. Amidst all these relics of a life abandoned, Amalie is whistling and swinging Sirris’s veil from one hand.

Sirris takes her by the shoulders and forces her to a halt. “Give it back.”

The words don’t come as readily as Sirris expected. She should feel sloppy and incomplete, standing here with a piece of her uniform missing - but she doesn’t, at least not entirely. If she’s honest, she doesn’t mind the air running its cool fingers through her hair and across her battle-heated cheeks. It’s a rare sensation. Sirris spends most of her time in Darkmoon livery, veil and all, even on occasions when casual dress would be acceptable. It’s her disguise and shield. If anyone ever saw her without it, she is sure they would see right through to her shameful past.

“Tell me what’s in the pit,” Amalie says.

Sirris deflects her instinctively, as she would an enemy blow. “First, tell me why you loosed your pyromancy on a Deep witch who has been dead for years. That seems unnecessary, even for you.”

Amalie’s breeziness disappears like a mask made of smoke. “All right. It ain’t a secret, I suppose.”

She puts her back to the wall and slides down to the straw-strewn floorboards, bowing her head so her expression becomes unreadable even with dark-sight. She spreads Sirris’s veil across her knees and begins to fold it carefully, intently. 

“It’s her fault,” Amalie says softly. “Hers and the rest of Aldrich’s witches.” Her voice is flat and hard and not at all normal.

“What is their fault?” Sirris asks, uneasy. She has never heard Amalie sound like this, so devoid of her usual spark. Whatever the girl is about to say, it seems she can only say it if she numbs herself first.

“It’s their fault I became someone I hated.”

“Explain.”

Amalie does not look up from the veil on her knees. Her hands work of their own accord as she speaks. 

“I told you I lived here once, before the end of Fire. It wasn’t an easy place to live: people going hollow right and left, the witches burning all the time. I did what I had to do. I was a thief, and I don’t mind saying so. Food and water, mostly, and any trinkets I could sell. You’d be surprised what the knights of Lothric would buy if they thought it would help them win a fight. Oh, they prayed to the old gods and the angels when their captains were looking, but they took the charms I offered ‘em too. They didn’t ask me no questions. Didn’t care. All they wanted to do was stay human.”

So Amalie sold talismans of dubious origins and efficacy to superstitious Lothric knights? As sins go, thievery and deception for survival’s sake are hardly the worst Sirris can think of. Gods, Sirris committed a far worse betrayal herself.

“And this thief you were before you came to Irithyll - you hated this incarnation of yourself?” Sirris asks.

Amalie smiles without warmth. “No. See, it got worse. The witches started burning more and more, and people started believing in ‘em - believing fire could cleanse the old Lord’s curse. People started disappearing. Friends of mine. Hunting each other down as soon as they looked the least bit hollow and feeding them to the pyres like they’d never been neighbors at all. I got…I got scared, ma’am. And I did things. That’s when I became someone I hated.”

Sirris’s heart flutters. She knows this story. This is her story too, the story of Sulyvahn’s coup.

Amalie twists Sirris’s folded veil. “One day I met a sorcerer, a pilgrim from Londor. Said he could teach me a spell so I’d never be afraid of going hollow again. I didn’t think twice before I said yes.”

Amalie’s left hand begins to glow red. Not the red of bonfires or pyromancy, but the red of blood. Death-red. Darkwraith-red.

Sirris takes an involuntary step back. 

“You know what this is, then. You know what it’s for,” Amalie says. She looks up at last. Her face is a tormented mix of stubbornness and guilt and streaked with tears. “The witches burned anyone who went hollow. I didn’t want to go hollow. I didn’t want to burn. So I stole humanity, and other people went hollow and burned instead of me.”

Sirris sinks to the floor across the aisle from her junior. Her stomach is roiling. She cannot say whether it is the pulsing red glow around Amalie’s hand that sickens her, or the similarities between Amalie’s story and Sirris’s own darkest hour. The awful desperation the girl has just evoked was once Sirris’s too.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone, ma’am,” Amalie says, sobbing now. “But I didn’t want to burn.”

There is no lie in her green eyes, only guilt and residual fear. Those are not a Darkwraith’s eyes.

Sirris takes a long breath and lets it out through her mouth, willing her heart to slow its nauseating pace. 

“Does the captain know?” she asks. That will settle the matter. If Gwyndolin heard this tale and decided to give Amalie a second chance, his judgment is final.

“Yes. I tried to hide it from him, but he felt the Londor magic in me.”

“He did not send you away?”

“He just asked me to tell him why.”

“So you told him what you’ve told me. And what did he say?”

Amalie sniffs hard against her tears. “He said he was just as guilty as me, because he stole souls to save the flame like I stole humanity to save myself. He knew he couldn’t bring back anyone who burned for him. Putting out the First Flame was the only way he could pay his debt.”

He described the firelinking as theft? Even now, several years later, that takes Sirris’s breath away. The old Gwyndolin truly is dead.

“So, that’s me,” Amalie says, spreading her hands in mock grandeur. “A thief who became a Darkmoon Knight. I’m not a child; I know I can’t give back what I took. All I can do is make something good of it, like the captain did. I don’t want to hurt anyone ever again. I want to protect people. I want to hunt whatever hurts them.”

The words ring through Sirris’s heart like a bell. She said something very similar to Gwyndolin when she told him of her cowardice. Now each peal of Amalie’s hurt raises an echo of her own.

“I see,” is all she can say.

“In the cave, you said I wouldn’t understand why you’re so hard on yourself. Well…maybe I would. Maybe you’ve done something you hated too.”

Sirris could tell her everything: about the disappearances and the dungeons and how she left other people to die so she could live. Amalie would understand. She has known the sort of consuming terror that changes a person and makes them do things they would never contemplate otherwise. Now she is handing Sirris an opportunity to unburden herself to someone who will not judge. Not even Gwyndolin has ever heard the full story, though he knows general picture. What would it be like for Amalie to know? Would sharing their pain with one another cut it in half and leave them both lighter?

The words are almost on Sirris’s tongue when her mind rebels. How could you even think of telling her your secrets? it hisses in panicked tones. She will see how unworthy of knighthood you are, and then she will tell the rest of the Darkmoon Knights because she cannot keep her mouth shut, and they will condemn you and you will have to leave Irithyll in shame like your grandfather and you will lose the only purpose you have ever known! You will be nothing!

She squeezes her eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” she says through pained breaths. “I’m so sorry.” For Amalie and herself and all the ghosts they made in survival’s name.

Amalie wipes her eyes and shrugs. “Don’t be. You had nothing to do with it.”

Before she knows what she is doing, Sirris moves across the aisle and sits down beside Amalie. Still shaking with leftover sobs, Amalie lets her head fall to the side so it almost rests on Sirris’s shoulder. Part of Sirris wishes her junior would lean down just a little further and make contact. She aches for some defense against her memories, even if that means showing weakness.

They sit there for a while in silence. Then Amalie asks, a little dazed, “What’s in the pit?”

No, Sirris cannot tell her that either - at least, she cannot call Hodrick by his name. “The altar of a mad hollow. He believed some anchor against the madness lay within human vertebrae. He seized them from his victims and piled them up below. Of course, it availed him nothing. Dunstan and I…put him to rest.”

“Hm. So I wasn’t the only one who got scared.”

“No,” Sirris says. Not at all. Again her confession tugs at her tongue, and again she restrains it.

Amalie gets abruptly and unsteadily to her feet, withdrawing her warmth from Sirris’s side. “I need to walk. I need to get out of here. The sooner we reach the castle, the better.” She holds out Sirris’s veil, rumpled from her clenched fist. “Do you still want it back?”

Sirris considers the white silk. It meant so much to her a short time ago, but just now it doesn’t seem to matter. 

“Perhaps in a little while. Keep it with you.”

Amalie looks at her strangely, but she tucks the veil into her satchel without question, alongside her own. 

“I meant what I said about your hair, ma’am, and your eyes.”

“You are overwrought and talking nonsense.”

“Am I now?”

Amalie gives Sirris a glimpse of her expression before she turns away and walks out of the stable. Her usual smirk is already returning.

For the first time, Sirris wonders if that is Amalie’s shield: her mischief, her irrepressible, reckless optimism and curiosity. Wards against the despair that turned her into a thief of humanity.

Amalie leads Sirris across a wooden bridge, then stops again at the edge of a town square lined on one side by teetering tenements. A detritus of life litters the ground: broken carts, farming tools, shapeless work clothes, empty crates gone black with damp and mold. The trees are blackened and bare, burnt into sinister shapes. Scorch marks still darken some of the cobbles. The unholy pyre that once burned here has left its mark on the land.

Amalie’s reddened eyes sweep the scene. Though she does not cry again, Sirris hears her breath trembling.

“Seeing it again… I didn’t think I would feel so…” She shakes her head. “I know you don’t like me, ma’am, but -”

“I don’t dislike you, Amalie, only your undisciplined behavior.”

“-would you hold my hand?”

For the second time that day, Sirris finds herself at a loss. “Are you quite serious?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Be not afraid. This place has no power to burn you now.”

“I know. Would you hold my hand all the same, until we’re past here?”

Sirris thinks of all the people whose hands she could not or did not hold: her comrades lost to Sulyvahn, Yorshka in her prison tower, Elisabeth in Firelink Shrine with nothing but brooding Undead for company, Hodrick dying on her blade (she allowed herself a last goodnight, no more). Enough of that, she decides. Whatever Sirris’s feelings, Amalie is still a comrade-in-arms, and she is in need.

“Very well,” Sirris says.

She slips her left hand into Amalie’s and feels the girl’s heart beating in her palm. It’s like holding a bird. It frightens Sirris a little.

They cross the square together. No ghosts rise at the sound of their footfalls. Even so, Amalie’s eyes remain dilated and alert even after the square is behind her. She does not let go of Sirris’s hand until they have passed beyond the boundaries of the Undead Settlement. Only when they have climbed a crumbling rampart outside the gates does Amalie let out her breath in an explosion of fog. Even after that, she does not resume her chatter.

Then she looks up at the cliff before them, and all the life rushes back to her face.

She grabs Sirris’s hand again. “Sirris,” she breathes, “look at it.”

Far above, Lothric Castle is wreathed in humanity. 

There must hundreds of thousands of sprites, perhaps millions, enough to form a dense black mist. It flows like oil and licks like flame along the ramparts. It smokes from windows and coils around the buttresses and bridges. Banners of it snap from the tops of each slender tower. The mist’s white edges shine all the brighter to Sirris’s dark-sight, making it appear as though the castle is coated in moonlit frost. It’s stark, unnerving, and oddly beautiful. There is something deliberate about it, an underlying creativity. The humanity hasn’t simply overtaken Lothric Castle - someone has shaped it into art.

Amalie whistles low. “There’s a sight.”

This is a gross understatement. Sirris has never seen anything like this in all her journeys through Lothric Kingdom. Her training tells her to flee: large concentrations of free humanity are often volatile. Her heart, however, bids her stand still and open-mouthed in wonder. She need not understand the work before her to know that it is masterful. Humanity is slippery even in this dark age, when humans have greater control over their own abilities than ever. Sirris has enough difficulty transferring small quantities of her humanity to her comrades for energy or healing. She cannot imagine the power it must have taken to sculpt this vast accumulation, this force of nature. It must be the work of multiple people, like Irithyll’s moonlight, perhaps the castle’s whole population.

Prince Lothric, Sirris thinks, had you lived to see this, I believe you would be proud.

“It’s calm,” Amalie marvels under her breath. Her lips are parted a little in her excitement, her eyes glittering. “It’s just hanging there like clouds. Who is doing this? How are they doing this?”

Ah, now Amalie sounds like herself again. Sirris is more relieved than she can explain.

“I cannot begin to conceive of it,” she says. “I expect many people are party to this…display.”

“It’s a new branch of magic, it’s got to be! If they can shape humanity like this, what else can they make with it? Weapons? Illusions? I wish the captain were here!”

“We can learn nothing from this position. Nor can we reach Lady Gwynevere. We have no way up to the castle, unless you know of yet another secret tunnel.”

“Batwing demons used to carry folk up. I’m sure they’re long gone by now. So…”

Amalie looks down at the small pile of Undead bones at her feet. She snaps her fingers and black flame leaps from her palm to the bones, flickering eagerly over the ancient kindling.

“…let’s see if they’ve a bonfire that can answer ours.”

~~~

Gwyn’s firstborn began the duel by summoning a dragon.

Morgott finds this unfair.

It came at Gwynhael’s call, a magnificent blue-scaled beast swooping down through the storm. Its wings are decked with feathers, its head with fierce, curving horns. Fire glows deep in its throat, a beacon in the dark. The creature is in every way an exemplar of its kind. Were this a dragon of the Lands Between, it would have been born in the Crucible’s heart.

And it is giving Eira trouble.

She is used to fighting dragons on horseback, not on foot. Bereft of her faithful Torrent, she lacks the speed and maneuverability she needs. Thus far she has only managed to land a few glancing blows on the dragon’s feet. Gwynhael himself, crouched on his mount’s serpentine neck, is entirely out of her reach. She cannot unleash the full force of her red lightning for fear of hitting Gwynhael and killing him outright.

The question now is how long Morgott waits before he intervenes. On one hand, he respects Eira’s desire for single combat. On the other, this is not single combat. Gwynhael has called upon a dragon to aid him: if he can do that, surely it would be no dishonor for Eira to call upon an Omen.

A divine beast warrior.

As Morgott watches, the dragon swings low and throws a burst of flame over its left shoulder. Eira just manages to roll out of the way. Before she can push herself up, Gwynhael has thrust his swordspear into the raging sky and called down lightning on her. Eira rolls again, this time to her other side, as the crackling bolt descends. She doesn’t quite get clear. Morgott hears her bitten-off cry as the sparks nip her back.  

Up, girl, he wills her. I have dealt thee worse blows than this.

As always, Eira is as sharp and ardent as the lightning she wields. She lunges past the dragon’s next fiery downpour before she is fully upright, darting beneath its belly and around to its rear. There she lifts Gransax’s bolt high and aims it at the center of the dragon’s spined back. The beast does not give her much time. Its great tail is already coiling up to swing. 

The bolt connects, snapping over the dragon’s back and wings - and not a second too soon. Eira has barely hurled her red missile before she must scramble out of reach. Then the creature’s tail sweeps outward, carving a gash in the clouds of the arena floor. Wind rushes up through the rent and knocks Eira flat. Gwynhael is upon her again in a single beat of his mount’s mighty wings. He answers her successful hit with three quick thrusts of his swordspear into the sky. Three bolts hiss down, more akin to iron than lightning. Eira can only roll from side to side and cover her head.

Morgott watches with his heart in his mouth. The worst of the attack appears to miss Eira, though her combat leathers are smoking when she digs her spear into the clouds and levers herself up. She cannot possibly be recovered; she lacks the luxury of recovery. If she stays on the ground for too long, the victory will go to Gwynhael. As soon as she has her feet beneath her, she leaps backwards, away from another searing breath, and lifts her gravel stone seal. Blue lightning ripples out along the ground like a wave of frost. It bites at the dragon’s feet, leaving them white and knobby with ice crystals. The beast roars its displeasure, a visceral sound from beyond time, and stumbles - but it does not fall.

Yes, Morgott decides, it’s time for him to intervene. He does not want to kill the dragon - slaying Gwynhael’s loyal steed will hardly convince the god to come home. If he can drive the creature away and dismount its rider, however, Eira will stand a better chance.

(By the grace of gold, he must be worried: he is thinking of Eira as “Eira” rather than “the Tarnished.”)

Closing his eyes, Morgott touches the Crucible magic woven like fiery roots through his blood. He strings its sacred aspects into a prayer - horn, tail, breath, wing - trusting intuition to lead him to the one that will serve him best.

Morgott’s mind does not alight upon any of those familiar aspects. Instead, a new image coalesces within his consciousness.

Thorn.

~~~

Eira is not prone to despair. Miquella sometimes describes her as a ruthless optimist - the two of them are well-matched in that regard. However, staring down Gwynhael’s dragon, soaked with icy water vapor and stinging with electrical discharge, she is beginning to doubt. She wishes Torrent were here. On foot, she doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to evade both Gwynhael’s lightning and the dragon’s fire. Already her body feels heavy. And how on earth is she going to get Gwynhael down?

The beast stomps the ice from its feet and lifts into the air. It wings are angled, which means it will probably fly in an arc and breathe fire along the ground as it goes. Eira grits her teeth and tenses her legs for a hasty retreat. For Gwyndolin’s sake she needs to keep trying. 

Then behind her, Morgott calls out, “Tarnished!”

Eira cranes her neck around, keeping one eye on the dragon’s glowing throat. Some distance away, Morgott has crouched. One leg is bent, the other extended behind him, and his palms are splayed in the clouds.

He lifts one hand and gestures Eira out of the way. “Permit me assist thee!” 

Eira is not about to argue. 

The dragon pulls its head back, nostrils and jaws smoking. As it banks into a curve around the edge of the storm field, Eira turns and runs. She feels the heat at her heels when fire begins to pour from its mouth and spread across the clouds. She braces herself for the burning pain that may come at any second and drives all her strength into her legs. She needs to get as far away as possible. I can’t fall, she tells herself, not a prayer but an imperative. I need to stay up. For Lin.

The pain never comes. Instead, red-gold light flashes behind her, and draconic shrieks join the howling wind.

She staggers to a halt and spins around. 

It is raining spines. Coppery needles are sheeting down as thick as Gwyndolin’s moonlight arrows. Each one is a star against the fireless dark, peppering the ancient dragon’s body and wings.

Morgott is crouched at the heart of this storm. A fan of red-gold quills has unfurled on his back, like those of the porcupines Eira sometimes saw wandering the forests of Limgrave, and it is discharging volley after volley of missiles into the sky.

Eira lets her spear fall to her side in awe. Morgott’s learned a new aspect of the Crucible? 

Gwynhael’s dragon bucks and rears. Without any harness to hold him, Gwynhael loses his balance at the first toss of his mount’s great head. The god tumbles to the ground and curls in on himself. Now it’s his turn to shield his head from the barrage.

Morgott ends his incantation as soon as Gwynhael falls. The few quills that have lodged themselves in Gwynhael’s arms and back dissolve into rust-colored dust. Meanwhile, the dragon circles above, keening for its master. 

In the sudden hush, Morgott straightens. His spines disappear, and the reddish glow around him fades. He tries to nod sternly at Eira, but his face is too full of wonder for that. Eira knows she must look the same. In the shadowlands, she saw the golden hippopotamus sprout thorns more times than she cares to remember, but she has never seen Morgott do so. Did he just now unlock that aspect within himself?

There is no time to ask. Gwynhael is picking himself up, taking up his fallen swordspear and waving his dragon off. Eira can feel his shadowed eyes on her.

“Dance, Tarnished,” Morgott says. 

Eira nods and turns to Gwynhael. Now that they are on even footing, she can get to work.

The god is as ready as she is. Show me thy lightning, he rasps in her mind.

Gwynhael pulls back his left hand and a golden bolt bursts into his palm. Eira lifts her own left hand and conjures the same. They hurl their lightning spears as one, both of them lifting off the ground. The two bolts meet in midair and obliterate each other in a shower of sparks.

Eira looks up at Gwynhael’s face, trying to glimpse his eyes. “Do you remember Gwyndolin?”

Gwynhael gives no sign that he has understood. He thrusts his swordspear at the sky; Eira mimics his gesture. Two identical bolts blink down with vicious speed and shatter each other.

So this is how it’s going to be, Eira thinks. She and Gwynhael are going to match each other spell for spell until one of them eventually overpowers the other in swiftness or strength. A lightning duel.

She sidesteps Gwynhael’s next sizzling downward bolt. “Do you remember Gwyndolin?”

Again, the god gives no answer. He raises his swordspear, and this time electricity cascades down like a falling curtain, burning its way after Eira as she retreats. She has no direct response to that, so she lets Fortissax’s twin spears lift her up and around it. She slams down each forked bolt on either side of Gwynhael, forcing him to backpedal. While he is still recoiling, Eira closes the gap and points her spear at his chest.

“Do you remember Lin?”

Gwynhael is still. The wind whips back his wild white hair. Eira catches a flicker of deep gold eyes before shadows swallow them again. 

“Your brother Lin,” she presses while she has his attention. “You and Gwynevere were the first people to call him that.”

The momentary spell breaks. Gwynhael surges back into motion, swinging his swordspear in a low arc. Eira jumps backwards in time to avoid being gutted. She does not fare so well with the wave of golden lightning that follows. She backs away from the sparks too fast and loses her balance.

Eira rolls out of the path of another descending bolt and uses the momentum to regain her feet. She conjures Lansseax’s crackling glaive as she comes up and brandishes it in front of her. Before Gwynhael can initiate another attack, a growling red wave rushes towards him and pushes him back. It carries the smell of a primordial storm, the same metallic, charged-air smell that permeated Farum Azula.

“You called him Lin,” Eira shouts into the wind, “because you believed he didn’t need Gwyn in his name!”

Gwynhael lifts his swordspear, but without real intent. No lightning falls. Instead the god shakes his head slowly back and forth, as if confused.

“Yes,” Eira insists. “You always knew the best part of Gwyndolin was Lin.”

Gwynhael shakes his head again. An animal sound rumbles from his throat. It is not anger, but rather the sound of a man grasping for something just out of his reach. A frustrated, frightened sound. He knows he should recognize what Eira is saying and doesn’t understand why he cannot.

“I know your brother,” Eira says softly. She thinks Gwynhael will hear her regardless of the wind. “He’s alive, and he misses you. He wants you to come home.”

The god’s swordspear trembles in his hand.

Eira lowers her weapon an inch. “Gwynhael?” 

From behind her comes Morgott’s faint warning: “Beware a wounded animal, Tarnished…”

Gwynhael explodes. He is everywhere at once, and his lightning is everywhere at once, bolt after bolt, coating the clouds in hot static. Eira has nowhere to stand. She jumps, cartwheels, handsprings, pushes her dancer’s body to the limit, and despite it all she feels electric fangs sink into her limbs more than once.

She stops thinking. She becomes the instrument of her lightning. She sends waves of red and blue and gold across the ground and calls down her own bolts to meet Gwynhael’s. The stormy air fills with a multicolored haze of sparks and smoke and a crackling louder even than the wind. Once, Gwynhael vanishes into the fog of battle, only to reappear behind Eira, grab her by the arm, and fling her bodily into the air. She comes down on the wings of Fortissax’s spears. She drives the first into the clouds a few feet away from Gwynhael, but the second spear lands too close to him. He crumples, swordspear falling from his fingers as his body spasms.

Eira throws her whole weight on top of Gwynhael, knees on his chest. She grips his wrists and forces his hands behind his head. Now she can see his eyes clear, and they are blank with fear and violence. Whatever Eira has caused him to remember, it frightens him - or perhaps it is what he cannot remember.

“Think of Lin,” she pants. “You know Lin. You must.”

In her mind, she counts down from ten. If she remembers dueling rules rightly, she only needs to hold Gwynhael here for ten seconds in order to claim victory.

He does not let her. Gwynhael hooks his leg around one of Eira’s and flips her over in one brutal motion. He is on top of her now, kneeling on her feet. Water vapor is soaking into her clothes and numbing her body. He is so much heavier than she is. She has no chance of throwing him off.

Well-fought, lightning warrior, he says. Eira hears no malice, only weary satisfaction. Now we end.

“Not yet.”

To the ground.

Eira grips her gravel stone seal in nerveless fingers and prays she is not about to destroy all three of them.

“Not the way you think.”

The sky rips. A new wind roars, as if all Placidusax’s kin have opened their throats in unison, and a hundred red lightning spears burn down from above. They pierce the clouds, tearing great holes in the storm-floor. The ground beneath Eira shivers uncertainly.

Amidst this deafening assault, Eira bares her teeth in a smile. “You asked to see my lightning.”

The last thing she sees before the clouds give way is Gwynhael’s lips parting in a gasp. Then they are both falling, helpless as dolls, limbs tangling, air whipping past them. Around them, rain streaks upwards. Eira can’t breathe. Her vision is blackening at the edges. When she tries to take a breath, the wind wrenches all the remaining air from her lungs. The force of it nearly drives her into unconsciousness.

On the edge of awareness, she hears a dragon scream. Then her back collides with hard, scaly flesh, and she knows no more.

Chapter Text

Only once, when he went to the kiln, was Gwyndolin more reluctant to leave his sister than he is now. 

He thinks of as many ways to linger beside Yorshka as he can. He helps her finish her bowl of soup and swallow a few dippers of water. He washes the blood and grime from her face. He undoes her braid, combs his fingers through her hair until it is more or less neat, and braids it again. When he has exhausted all these ministrations, he holds her hand until Dunstan starts grumbling that it really is time to get a move on. Then and not a moment before, Gwyndolin kisses Yorshka’s cold brow and bids her farewell.

“We shall soon return to thee,” he tells her. If the corvian settler is correct, the painter of the new world is imprisoned not far away. Gwyndolin hopes that is true. His ankle can’t take much exertion. He knows he is courting danger by wandering the settlement with a limp, even with Dunstan beside him.

Yorshka curls into a ball and tucks her head into her arms.

Gwyndolin rests his hand on her hair for several long seconds before he stands up. “I love thee. Remember.”

On the way out of the house, Gwyndolin checks the door and finds, to his great surprise, that it is warded. It is not any ward with which he is familiar - it must be corvian magic - but it is strong. Unless he is mistaken, it is an aural ward: when activated, the runes will emit a sound so unbearable as to drive intruders from the threshold. In this case it must be a sound audible only to corvian. Neither Gwyndolin nor his companions heard anything when they entered the house.

He glances over his shoulder at the corvian settler leaning on the wall. Dunstan was right: there is more to the frail old bird than meets the eye.

~~~

Gwyndolin harbored no delusions that exploring the corvian settlement would lift his failing spirits. He was unprepared, however, for how much it upsets him. 

The few living residents are sick to the point of death. Most of them can do no more than lie on the rooftops or in the rotting streets and croak their last breaths. The rest are hostile. They thrash about and snap their beaks and spit foul brown liquid that reeks like an open grave. Gwyndolin doesn’t know whether this is aggression or pain so terrible that violence is the only relief.

The corvian knights are not sick or hurt. They hang from roof eaves like huge sleek bats, metal shining in their folded hands, ready to plunge down on anything that moves. Gwyndolin hates them. They make him think of Omenkillers, monsters from the time before Eira’s reign whose cruelty Morgott once described with all his fur standing on end. If anything, the corvian knights are even worse. At least the Omenkillers’ prey could fight back.

And the worst of it is that Gwyndolin is no better than they. He and his family hunted anyone who threatened their age just as these corvians are doing now. Lloyd’s Undead hunts, the asylums, the firelinking itself. Gwyndolin would be a hypocrite if he said he cannot understand what compels these corvians to kill their own kin.

None of this prevents him, however, from taking a grim satisfaction in bringing them down in storms of magic.

The rot is thick here. It seeps up through the snow in bloody patches and turns the water in the moat to rust. The bridges and portcullises are caked in fungal growths. A few of the houses have been completely overtaken. Dunstan opens the door to one unremarkable residence to find that rot has swallowed the inside, burying the single small room in spongy, maggoty tissue. The sweet reek of it clings to the back of Gwyndolin’s throat and makes him gag. He has never seen Caelid, but he thinks it must smell like this.

Dunstan yanks the door shut without stepping inside.

In the house next door - which is pristine - they find a faded, pointed hood. This is not the dull gray hood once worn by serfs, servants, and prisoners across Lothric. This one is red.

“It’s Gael’s,” Dunstan says. “He was wearing it when I met him in the Cathedral of the Deep. So the old corvian was right: he was here once.”

Gwyndolin says nothing. He does not know what a red thrall’s hood might signify, but the thought makes him uneasy. In every age and every land he knows of, red is a color for war.

Past the piles of rot and the spitting, croaking settlers, they follow the rooftops to the attic of a chapel even smaller and plainer than Friede’s. Dunstan crouches at the window and studies the gloomy interior. When he looks back at Gwyndolin, his mouth is set in a grim line.

“Corvian knights,” he reports, “two of ‘em. One with a rapier, one with claws. What are you going to do now, Lin? You should have let Yorshka heal your ankle.”

“As I told thee, I shall rain hellfire on them from above and leave the melee to thee.”

“Can you promise me I won’t be caught up in that hellfire?”

“Be nimble, dear Unkindled.”

Dunstan sighs. “All right. It worked when we fought Sulyvahn’s knights in Irithyll, I suppose.”

He ducks through the window and creeps out onto the rafters. Gwyndolin follows behind him, edging forward on hands and knees to spare his tender ankle. Then, without further contemplation, Dunstan drops down into the chapel. A great shrieking and clattering erupts below as the two corvians fall upon the intruder.

Gwyndolin is ready. He has a spell for just this purpose. With one hand on the rafters for balance, he closes his eyes and lifts his catalyst. The furor below fades away as his mind fills with a vision of a star cluster, bright pinpricks against the darkness. Then, with a flick of a catalyst, he opens his eyes, and the star cluster becomes real. A dark purple cloud forms over his head, shimmering and ready to burst.

“Unkindled!” he shouts into the din. He doubts Dunstan can hear the warning - he can’t even see where Dunstan has gone. The man has disappeared into a whirl of black feathers and cloaks and steel.

There is no time to wonder. The clouds burst, and the stars rain down upon the chapel. The dim space is suddenly full of light, luminous purple and chilly blue, the colors of the primordial current, streaking down like arrows. It’s so bright that Gwyndolin cannot see past it. What he hears gives him no clear picture of what is happening below: corvian shrieks, clanging metal, and the clear chiming of glintstone sorcery. Having unleashed his magical downpour, he can only pray Dunstan has retreated to the edge of the room.

When the dazzling lights fade, Gwyndolin peers over the rafters. He can no longer see one of the corvians. The other is flat on its back with its cloak splayed around it. Before it can rise, Dunstan’s battle-yell breaks the silence. The Unkindled throws himself bodily out of the shadows and lands on the fallen corvian knight. His claymore flashes in the dimness as he drives it into the creature’s chest.

No sooner has Gwyndolin witnessed this execution than the air stirs near him. His head snaps around: the second corvian has leapt up to the rafters with twin fans of knives crossed over its chest. Time seems to slow as the great bird hangs in the air. Gwyndolin can see the needle-slim tips of all eight metal talons. He thinks absurdly of Miquella and his golden needles.

The corvian reaches out with its knives. They cross over Gwyndolin’s throat as a cold, hard cage, four bars on each side. 

Gwyndolin lifts his catalyst. Twelve dark purple stars burst into life and streak into the corvian’s chest. At this close range, the spell knocks it out of the air. Down below, Gwyndolin hears the wet, metallic sound of Dunstan greeting the falling knight. There is a thump and a rattle, then stillness.

In that stillness, Gwyndolin lifts a curiously steady hand to one side of his neck. His fingers find four fine, stinging lines and come away speckled red.

He exhales hard. The cuts are shallow. His spell must have hit the corvian in time to stay the greater part of its attack. Gwyndolin will not let himself think about it any further than that.

Dunstan’s voice drifts up to him - a welcome distraction. “Are you still up there?”

“Aye.” He is proud that his voice does not shake.

“For Dark’s sake, Lin, you scared me. I thought the one with the claws got you.”

“‘Twas a near thing, but nay. I am but lightly wounded.”

“Drop down, then. I’ll catch you.”

For some reason this frightens Gwyndolin more than the corvian leaping up to cut his throat. He does not fancy dropping into darkness through which he can scarcely see what lies below. It reminds him too much of the nightmares he had just before he decided to end Fire.

“I mislike this,” he says, knowing all the while that this is the easiest way to go about getting down.

“I’ve never let you fall before, have I?”

Nay, thou hast not, Gwyndolin thinks. In no way hast thou ever allowed me to fall.

“I’m ready when you are,” Dunstan says.

Gwyndolin maneuvers himself into a sitting position, ignoring the bright pain that sings through his ankle when he puts weight on it. Before he can think twice about what he must do, he pushes himself off the edge of the rafters.

It’s over in a few terrifying seconds. One moment he is falling into empty space; the next he has thudded into Dunstan’s arms. The Unkindled totters backward but somehow keeps his feet. Gwyndolin makes no attempt to put his own feet on the floor. He does not feel as indignant as he thinks he should, hanging there in Dunstan’s grip like a sack. For once, he finds he doesn’t mind being supported by someone stronger than he is.

Dunstan sets his charge down sooner than Gwyndolin would like. Whatever he did to his ankle when he shifted his weight to sit down on the rafters (never mind all the walking), it is not pleased with him. He has to hold his foot an inch off the floor to stave off the pain.

Dunstan draws back and eyes the cuts on Gwyndolin’s neck. His dark brows knit. “Couldn’t have been much closer,” he mutters. “Lucky your blood isn’t all over the ceiling.” 

Gwyndolin laughs nervously. He can feel thin lines of blood trickling into the collar of his cloak. “Aye, indeed.”

~~~

Somewhere between sleep and waking, Yorshka sees her mother.

It isn’t quite a dream, because Priscilla is here in the corvian’s house. It isn’t quite real, because Priscilla is here in the corvian’s house.

Yorshka knows her mother is not - cannot be - as solid as she appears. She is a ghost made of powder snow, and she will dissolve if Yorshka touches her. So Yorshka digs her fingers into her bed of straw and rags and imagines she is clutching Priscilla’s white fur robes instead.

Priscilla does not touch her daughter either. She does not move at all. Yorshka longs for her to move. If Priscilla shifts, the horns studding her brow will catch the firelight and glint like stars, and Yorshka can wish on them properly.

She often did that as a child. Ariamis had no stars or moon to hear her wishes, but Priscilla’s horns served just as well. Her mother could grant any hope and right any wrong, it seemed to little Yorshka. And unlike the stars, Priscilla was warm and soft.

But Priscilla offers her daughter no warmth or softness this time. She makes no movement to turn her horns into stars. She just sits on the scrubbed stone floor with her eyes closed and her hands in her lap.

Yorshka wonders briefly if she is delirious. No true apparition of Priscilla would withhold comfort like this.

“I am frightened,” Yorshka says for the third time. “There is such hurt in this land. Mother, what would you do? What am I to do?”

Of course Priscilla says nothing. Sitting there with her head bowed, she might as well be a pious statue.

Yorshka whimpers and pushes her face into the bedding. She has no strength to cry, though she wants to, how she wants to. If only Miquella were here! He is very good at dreams, and he would know in an instant why Priscilla is both silent and still. Is she disappointed that her daughter took so long to return to the painted world? Had Yorshka come home sooner, perhaps she could have ensured Ariandel had a peaceful burning and spared it this awful decay. Now none of the things she knows how to do - planting flowers and laying prism stones to light the way home - will ease this world’s passing. Dunstan and Gwyndolin will have to kill lonely Friede to get at the flame, or be killed themselves. Even the poor corvians outside are beyond healing.

Yorshka turns her head to one side and looks up at Priscilla. Still her mother neither moves nor speaks.

The world tilts beneath her, leaving Yorshka dangling on the edge of despair. It would be so easy to slide down that slope. In the pit at the bottom are all the demons she has never quite banished, her own private Izalith waiting to consume her. The Demon of Guilt wields the same poison she unwittingly helped Sulyvahn administer to Gwyndolin. The Demon of Helplessness cries in agony, immune to her healing. The Demon of Shame wears her own face.

She curls her fingers tighter into her bedding and bites down on her tears. This is no time to dissolve: Gwyndolin and Dunstan are in danger. She has done what she can for the corvians in the moat; now what is left? She must think. She must use what she is given. And if her mother will not help her, she must do it herself.

…Oh. That’s a thought: perhaps Priscilla will not speak because she does not need to. Yorshka already knows what she needs to know, and her mother trusts her to discover it on her own.

Yorshka thinks Miquella would be very pleased with that logic. That gives her strength. In her mind’s eye she conjures claws for herself, sinks them into the slope of despair, and hauls herself up an arm’s length.

As she pulls herself away from the pit of demons, she thinks. How can she keep Gwyndolin and Dunstan safe and ensure a swift end to Ariandel’s suffering? She cannot fight. She can only heal those who are not yet too far gone. 

She finds the answer so quickly she is amazed she did not see it sooner. Dunstan gave it to her in Friede’s church, when he spoke of Friede’s failed firelinking. She wasn’t strong enough, and it swallowed her whole, he said. That would give her good reason to be afraid of fire. With those words he identified the root of Ariandel’s protracted rot. The corvian who lives in this house confirmed it not long ago. 

Yorshka knows what she must do. For Dark’s sake, she knew it from the moment she sensed Friede’s loneliness - when it struck her how similar Ariandel’s keeper is to Dark Sun Gwyndolin. She should have trusted her instincts.

She knows her companions would discourage her in the strongest of terms from attempting what she has in mind. She also knows that she cannot always wait for them to come to her. If she is ever to be ready and worthy to stand atop Priscilla’s tower, she must learn to act on her own.

Forgive me, she begs her brother. I do this to keep thee safe. There is still one soul in Ariandel who may not yet be beyond healing.

Slowly, she pushes herself to her feet, groaning softly and leaning on the wall when dizziness washes over her. She is still so tired and cold. This is going to be a long journey. With luck, the greatwolf will find her and protect her on the way. If not, she will use what Morgott has taught her about evading and protect herself instead.

The corvian settler, still standing by his kitchen counter, turns his wide eyes on her. “My lady, please rest.”

“I cannot,” Yorshka says. She forces herself to still her shaking shoulders. “There is something I must do. Pray ’twill lead Ariandel to fire.”

She knows she has found the right answer because when she looks back at her bed of straw, Priscilla is gone. 

~~~

Neither Gwyndolin nor Dunstan spares the chapel much of a look on the way out. Its only remarkable feature is the miracle scroll laid on the altar to Velka: it conjures discs of light that return to the caster’s hand after striking a foe. Gwyndolin thinks again of Miquella and the triple rings of light he sometimes wielded in the training yard. How Gwyndolin yearns to see his friend again! He would much rather be in Leyndell with the golden god, contemplating the Haligtree-to-be, than in this forsaken place where everything wants him dead.

The miracle alone tells them nothing. They have no way of knowing if Gael left it on the altar, and anyway, Gael is not here, nor is the painter. They leave the scroll where it is and step outside into the cold, faintly sweet air.

They emerge from the chapel in a graveyard whose humble stones are disappearing under fungal blooms of rot. Just uphill, a grander building looms over the surroundings. It is larger than any structure in the settlement save the watchtowers, the stonework smoother. Much of the lower level is taken up by a long porch lined with rounded arches. It is an extravagant use of stone compared to the plain, functional dwellings found everywhere else in the settlement. This building, then, must have been a place of importance in happier times.

Gwyndolin looks longingly at the braziers burning beneath the arches. “Think’st thou ‘twill be warm within?”

“Probably not.” Dunstan folds his arms and scowls at the building’s double doors. “The place is unguarded. I don’t like it. I’d wager whatever isn’t out here is waiting for us in there. Ten more corvian knights, like as not.”

This is a sensible assessment, yet still Gwyndolin wants nothing more than to warm himself by those braziers. He is sore and tired and he has been shivering since he left the corvian settler’s house. At least Yorshka has a bonfire to keep the chill off her while she rests.

Dunstan takes Gwyndolin by the arm and helps him limp up the steps. While Gwyndolin snatches a few seconds of warmth beside one of the braziers, Dunstan leans on the double doors. They emit a long, low creak as they open.

The Unkindled grimaces. “Well, we’re not going to take whoever’s in there by surprise. Stay behind me.”

Together they step across the threshold and squint into the dark. 

The building’s stately architecture belies its shabby interior. Inside, the foyer is littered with free-standing candelabra coated in old wax and tables coming apart at the joints. Beyond this entryway Gwyndolin can make out nothing but a long, high-ceilinged room swallowed in shadow. The walls are lined with bookshelves in the manner of a study or library. Some of their contents have been gathered into huge piles or scattered across the floor. Books and loose pages lie about like so many beached fish. 

Gwyndolin whispers, “Seest thou aught -” 

“Shh.” Dunstan is rigid. His dark-sighted eyes are fixed on the shadows at the far end of the room. “Someone’s moving back there. I think it’s -”

“I thought I might find you here,” says a low, gravelly voice from the dark.

Dunstan swears under his breath.

Sir Vilhelm is prowling up the steps from the lower part of the library, sleek and assured as a panther. A greatsword hangs casually from his right hand. The blade, woven nearly into a helix, is rippling up and down with blackflame. 

Dunstan draws his claymore, still black with dried corvian blood. “Funny - I was about to say the same thing. Didn’t think we’d seen the last of you. What does Friede have you guarding in here?”

Vilhelm stops on the steps, left hand on his hip. An eerie red glow filters through his fingers. “Is that how it is? Every secret must be unearthed, every wrong set right.”

“And why shouldn’t we try?”

“You think yourself noble, don’t you? You and your Darkmoon knight and your crossbreed girl who thinks she can heal this place. Seekers of truth. But you aren’t exceptional, Unkindled. I’ve seen your kind before.”

Dunstan’s casting hand curls into a fist. “And I’ve seen yours.”

Aye, thou hast, Gwyndolin thinks, with a sudden, terrible weight in his gut. I have been Vilhelm, and Friede, and the corvian knights, and all who cling to the world they know.

“You never learn,” Vilhelm says. “Sometimes it’s best to let things lie.”

“I know what happens when you let things lie too long.”

“So you would bring change. Change is agony. Do you have the stomach for it?”

“The pile of ash that used to be Lord Gwyn says I do.”

If Friede’s knight has any reaction to this, it’s hidden behind his black helm. Instead he lifts his greatsword up in front of him and the shadowy flames burn fiercer.

“Curious. Show me.”

Vilhelm and Dunstan fly at each other. Dunstan catches Vilhelm’s downward slash on his claymore, then breaks away in a shower of sparks and backsteps Vilhelm’s second swing. The burning blade smashes into the stones. While the knight is still hefting his greatsword off the floor, Dunstan lunges forward in a low thrust. His claymore clips Vilhelm’s side and forces a grunt of pain from the man. 

Dunstan presses his advantage while he has it. He swipes at Vilhelm, driving the knight back. Even in retreat, however, Vilhelm is evasive and stays just out of reach of Dunstan’s claymore. Only when he is flat against a wall does Dunstan land a blow, slashing through the stem of a candelabra and into Vilhelm’s chest. Then Vilhelm lifts his left hand, and Dunstan’s blade glances off that strange red glow as if it were stone, not light. That second of recoil is all Vilhelm needs to drop beneath Dunstan’s arm and roll clear. Now Dunstan is on the defensive, backpedaling from Vilhelm’s heavy strikes. Each missed blow shakes the floor.

At the top of the library steps, Gwyndolin crouches down. He can’t join the fray on his wounded ankle, but he can still support Dunstan with magic. He smiles grimly: he supported Eira the same way in their fight with Aldrich.

He has just lifted his catalyst when Vilhelm’s grating voice says, “No, we can’t have that.”

A runic circle, glowing purple, imprints itself on the floor around the knight - and something clicks in Gwyndolin’s mind.

Wary, he reaches for the first spell that occurs to him, the twelve dark shooting stars he used against the corvian in the chapel. It’s a familiar spell by now, easy to visualize - except he can’t. When he tries to imagine those twelve purple streaks against the cosmic night, his mind runs up against a wall. The force of that mental impact scatters his thoughts like leaves. His visualization dissolves as if it were no more than a hazy dream.

Gwyndolin’s breath catches. He tries another spell: a dark comet, invisible to all but the caster. Again his mind slams into a barricade. This time his heart stutters like his body has hit a wall too. Desperate now, Gwyndolin tilts his head to the roof and draws his arm back, willing himself to call down a rain of arrows. Of all the spells he knows, surely he can perform that one! But no. He cannot visualize it. His mind hits that horrid barrier and goes blank.

Gwyndolin pitches forward onto his hands and knees. He broke me.

His face must be full of stark panic, because Vilhelm says, “You should have stayed near your bonfires, Darkmoon,” and Dunstan roars, “What did you do?” and surges at Friede’s knight with renewed ferocity.

Gwyndolin cannot move. His breath splinters into shallow gasps. He is shaking, fit to be sick. Even if he was steady enough to try his bow, this is no place to use it; Vilhelm is far too agile. All he can do is watch while Dunstan fights for his life and think, I am broken.

Gwyndolin’s condition spurs Dunstan to fury. He stops retreating and circles around Vilhelm instead, thrusting at him between blows, opening cuts on his arms and chest. Vilhelm’s black mantle is shiny with blood. When the knight tries to block with his glowing red hand, Dunstan kicks it away and sends him reeling. Dunstan throws himself atop Vilhelm, knocking him to the floor. For a moment it looks like the duel will end there. Then Vilhelm’s head snaps up and cracks into Dunstan’s. The Unkindled lurches away with hands pressed to his brow. He just manages to roll out of the way when Vilhelm’s greatsword plunges down. 

Dunstan tumbles back to his feet, blinking and shaking his head, blood trickling down his face. He staggers back a little dizzily when Vilhelm thrusts at him and almost loses his balance again. Then without warning, he reverses his backward momentum into a spinning slash that catches Vilhelm across the abdomen. The knight stumbles away a few paces and drops to one knee, one hand clutching his middle. Golden healing light wells around him. 

This is his undoing. Immobilized by his miracle, Vilhelm is defenseless when Dunstan charges at him and topples him to the floor. Out from under Dunstan’s cloak come four long, slender blades, held between each finger of his left hand. With them he pins Vilhelm’s throat in metal claws.

Crow talons. He must have taken them from one of the corvians in the chapel.

Dunstan slits Vilhelm’s throat.

The knight’s final words are not for his killer. He manages a strangled, “Forgive me, my lady…Elfriede.” Then his voice becomes a gurgle and his blood spurts away into the cracks between the stones. His sword hand goes limp. His body dissolves into dust, joining the thick layer on the library floor.

Dunstan straightens and wipes blood from his eyes, picking up Vilhelm’s greatsword as he goes. Blackflame flickers within the woven blade at his touch. “I’ll take that,” the Unkindled mutters to himself, like a child who just found the perfect stick with which to play knights and dragons.

Gwyndolin hardly hears him muttering something about a key. His mind is full of the click Vilhelm’s spell made, that intangible lever being thrown. He still cannot access his magic. When he tries, that sound echoes through his consciousness and smothers his will.

He staggers to the library doors and leans on the frame, breathing hard through his nose and swallowing the bile on his tongue. His eyes are burning. He dares not open his mouth.

Through a haze of misery, he feels Dunstan’s hand on his shoulder. “You’re all right, Lin. You’re all right.”

Only if all right means shaking all over.

“I am not. That was dreadful.”

“Nasty piece of work, wasn’t he?”

“I…” 

I am broken. 

Gwyndolin swallows hard, pushing the nightmare away. “I could not feel my magic.”

“Neither could I. I’ve had dreams like this, except in those dreams it’s always my sword arm that stops working. Much worse for you than it was for me, I reckon.”

Gwyndolin nods, jaw clenched.

“Can you feel your magic now?”

It’s difficult to say. At the moment, all Gwyndolin can feel are his shivering limbs and throbbing ankle and neck. His thoughts fly apart like a herd of frightened animals when he directs them to sorcery. His only clear notion is that he wants to get out of this place. 

What if Vilhelm’s spell ruined something inside Gwyndolin and he can never work magic again? What will he be without magic?

Before he can stop himself, he has sunk to the floor, and Dunstan has sunk down with him, and he is hyperventilating on the Unkindled’s shoulder. 

“Forgive me. I could not aid thee.”

“It ain’t your fault Vilhelm had a dirty trick up his sleeve,” Dunstan says, as if from a distance. “Now squeeze my arm.”

Gwyndolin obeys. He loops his shaking arms around one of Dunstan’s, which is blessedly steady, and holds it tight. 

“Breathe,” Dunstan says. 

Gwyndolin tries to take a breath, coughs instead. He squeezes Dunstan’s arm harder and tries again. This time air scrapes past his lips. He leans forward as he lets the breath out, then rocks backward as he takes another. 

“That’s it,” Dunstan says. “In and out.” 

For a while, that’s all Gwyndolin does. He holds Dunstan’s arm as if it is his last anchor to life and rocks back and forth, back and forth, until his body remembers how to breathe. That is his whole existence. It takes him a long time to notice that Dunstan has wrapped his own cloak around him, and Gwyndolin is now swaddled in two layers of warm fabric. Once he recognizes this detail, he begins to come back to himself. The breaths come easier and his heartbeat slows. His thoughts slow with it.

“Try a spell,” Dunstan says once Gwyndolin is breathing normally again. “Just something small.”

Gwyndolin takes his catalyst in one hand and opens the other. Dunstan cups Gwyndolin’s empty hand in his own to stop it from trembling. 

“Just something small,” the Unkindled repeats.

With dread in his heart, Gwyndolin blows gently across his open palm. Blue sparks lift from his skin and drift upwards like fireflies.

“There, you see?” Dunstan says. “You’re all right.”

Gwyndolin sags against Dunstan’s shoulder. “Nay. I think I am most unwell,” he says unsteadily.

“I know. It’s passing.”

“I cannot bear this place.”

“I understand. It’s too much like our own world was at the end. It’s like going through it all again.”

“I hurt.”

“So do I, but a bonfire will set me right. When we’re done here, we can go back to Yorshka and she can fix you up if she’s feeling better.”

Gwyndolin does not want to go anywhere at the moment. He wants to lean on Dunstan and forget that he has anything else to do.

“When you’re ready, we should move on,” Dunstan says.

“Why?”

“To give this world a chance, and maybe find a way to give ours a chance too.”

“But to what purpose? So it may come to ruin in some other way at some other time?”

“I never should have said those things about Dark ending our world instead of Fire. It’s turning you hollow. Don’t dwell on it; it was just a thought.”

They sit like that for a while, saying nothing more. The last of the barriers Vilhelm erected in Gwyndolin’s mind fall away. Once more he can dip like a fish in and out of the magical current flowing through his blood. It is a glorious feeling, frosty and clean. Gwyndolin vows never to take it for granted again. 

“It took you too long to catch your breath,” Dunstan murmurs at last.

“Say nothing more of mine heart, Unkindled. I will not hear it.”

“Promise me you’ll let Ursa and Miquella take a look at you when we’re home, and I won’t say another word about your heart, no matter how slowly you breathe when you’re asleep.”

Gwyndolin sighs. He supposes it won’t hurt to let his healers look him over, though it’s likely to be a waste of time. 

“Very well.”

“I’ll hold you to it.” Dunstan stands up and pulls Gwyndolin to his feet, supporting him when his ankle wobbles. “Now, what do your illusionist’s eyes see? Friede’s watchdog had a key on him. There must be something in here he didn’t want us to find.”

Gwyndolin scans the dusty little room, looking for the telltale signs of concealment or deception. He sees none. Instead, his gaze catches on something metallic gleaming between two bookcases.

“There are no illusions here,” he says. He gestures at the lever sitting half-concealed amidst the shelves. It’s the one thing in the room that isn’t covered in a thick gray pall of dust. “Prithee, try Sir Vilhelm’s key.”

Dunstan follows Gwyndolin’s gaze to the lever and shakes his head. “Thank Dark for you, Lin. Do you know how long it would have taken me to see that?”

He crosses the room to the lever, considers it for a moment, then bends down and slips the key into a lock set low to the ground. When he pulls the lever, it clicks smoothly backwards. There is a creaking above, and a wooden staircase swings down from the ceiling. Dust puffs up around it as it thuds into the floorboards.

Dunstan regards the stairs with his hand on his claymore, as if he half expects a corvian knight to unfold itself from the ceiling too.

“All that fuss for a hidden staircase,” he says. “It’s too simple.”

It is - and that means there can be no fire here. If the painter of the new world is indeed imprisoned in this library, Ariandel’s flame is not with her. Such a precious thing is not likely to be so loosely hidden.

Dunstan helps Gwyndolin limp up the stairs. At the top is a small, unlit garret. The floorboards are bare and strewn with books, and the only furnishing is the low table standing against one wall. On that table is a girl. She is bent almost in two, sketching in the dust with her fingertip. A blanket and a shapeless brown robe shroud all of her tiny body save for her bare feet. White hair cascades from beneath her cap and pools on the tabletop. When she looks up at the sound of her visitors’ footfalls, Gwyndolin sees that her cheeks are cracked with patches of scales like dry earth. Her eyes are a lurid red-gold with reptilian slits for pupils. Gwyndolin can feel them piercing right through him, down to the ashen fragment of Gwyn’s soul resting alongside his heart.

“Don’t be afraid,” Dunstan says. “We’re not with Vilhelm. We’re going to let you out of here.”

“I know,” says the dragon girl in a voice at once youthful and ancient. Not once does her finger stop moving, even though she is not looking at it. It goes on sketching of its own accord, possessed by images so vivid the girl does not need to see them to bring them into being. “Ye come to show me flame.”

“To show you flame,” Dunstan repeats, realizing.

“The old must end ere the new may begin.” The girl half chants this sentence, like a nursery rhyme. “What a pair ye make: one not ken to fire and one absorbed by fire. Paint a world ye cannot, but ye may act as midwives yet.”

“How do you know who we are?”

She knows because she is the painter, Gwyndolin thinks. That much is obvious from the floor, which Gwyndolin now sees is covered in sketches. Rivers and valleys snake their way through the dust; forests speckle the boards. The fallen books are part of the scene, standing in for mountains and hills, castles and towers. And beyond all that, there is a light in the girl’s eyes that makes Gwyndolin’s insides writhe. It is the light of prescience, the same fey light that filled Gwyn’s eyes just before he went off to burn. This strange creature is the keeper of a vision that will not be denied.

When she answers, she is looking at Dunstan, but her words are for Gwyndolin:

“I saw you in her dreams.”

Chapter Text

“Prithee, hast thou any blankets?”

Dunstan closes his eyes against the splitting pain in his head. “Lin, don’t fuss. I just need a bonfire.”

But the dragon girl has already answered, “Oh, yes,” and hopped off her table. As she crosses to a corner of the garret, her bare feet smear the drawings in the dust. This doesn’t seem to bother her.

“Sit,” Gwyndolin says. “We would both do well to rest ere we make our return journey, and I...” He wraps his arms around himself. “…wish to be warm a while.”

“I can’t sit on her drawings.”

“No matter,” the painter says brightly. She has pried up a floorboard and hefted out a pile of fabric that might once have passed for blankets. Now it looks more like dropcloths for keeping paint off the floor. “I have no further need of my scribblings. The door is open, and soon I shall leave this place and begin to paint.”

Gwyndolin looks at Dunstan as if to say, See? No excuses, and pushes down on his shoulder. “Sit.”

Dunstan sits. 

The painter deposits her pile of would-be blankets beside her guests, then returns to sketching in the dust on her table. Dunstan and Gwyndolin wrap themselves up as best they can. The fabric isn’t particularly thick and it has a musty smell, but it cuts some of the chill. Dunstan isn’t about to complain. He’s still dizzy from the blow to his head and he can’t quite see straight. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to lie still for a while before attempting to walk back to the bonfire.

He stretches out on the floor and closes his eyes, willing the pain to recede into the back of his awareness. It does, mostly. Dunstan is good at walling off his pain. The itchiness is more stubborn. His face is crusted in dried blood from the gash in his forehead, and it takes all his effort not to scratch.

Here you are again, he thinks to himself, lying on the floor covered in your own blood, just like old times. I thought you were done with all that, Dunstan, you fool. Are you sure what you’re doing is worth it?

He already knows the answer. If there is the slightest chance that this journey will help avert the end of the world - even temporarily - he must take it. When he went to the kiln, his dearest hope was that no one would ever again wear the chains he had borne since his awakening in the Undead Asylum. If he has to shed a bit of his blood to preserve that hope, so be it.

Elsewhere in the room, Gwyndolin is speaking to the painter. There is a splash of water against glass, and then a rustle and a soft wince as the god kneels beside Dunstan.

“How farest thou?” 

“My head hurts,” Dunstan says without opening his eyes.

“I imagine so. Thou’rt fortunate Sir Vilhelm did not split thy skull.”

“I’ve got a hard head.”

“I know it, Unkindled.”

Dunstan hears a smile in Gwyndolin’s voice. He is thinking of something sarcastic to say in return when suddenly, a cool damp cloth comes to rest against his brow. It stings as it brushes the edge of the cut on his forehead.

“What are you -”

“Thou wert most kind to me when Sir Vilhelm…well.” The words “sealed my magic” hang unspoken in the air, like a remembered nightmare. “Now permit me to look after thee in return.”

“Lin, really, don’t fuss,” Dunstan says, although he is touched. “There’s no point. Whatever’s wrong with me, the bonfire will put it right.”

“Hush,” says Gwyndolin, and goes on gently wiping the blood from Dunstan’s face. 

Dunstan makes further no further protest. He’s too tired, and anyway, he doesn’t mind being looked after for a change. If nothing else, this will relieve the itching.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. 

“Perfectly well.”

That’s a lie. Dunstan can feel the god’s hand trembling.

“Your magic’s all right?”

The cloth pauses in its slow circular motions. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. I am…rather shaken, ‘tis all.”

“I don’t blame you. Must’ve been like having a part of you ripped away.”

“I bade thee hush.” There is a heavy silence, filled by the painter’s finger squeaking against the tabletop. Then Gwyndolin adds in a small voice, “Art thou never frightened?”

“Of course I am.” 

“Of what?”

I’m afraid I might be right about Dark ending our world instead of Fire. I’m afraid humans are going to become just like the gods one day, holding on to their age even if it ruins everything. I meant what I told you: what we did at the kiln mattered, and there will always be someone like us to give the world another chance no matter how wrong it goes. I believe it. But I’m afraid too, friend.

“Of having to do it all again,” Dunstan says, trusting Gwyndolin to know what he means. “I don’t think I can do it again. Twice was enough.”

I want to go home to Elisabeth and see our child born. I want our child and the children of other ages to grow up in peace. Is that too much to ask? 

Gwyndolin puts his hand on Dunstan’s wrist. “Should it come to that, I shall be with thee. Then we shall be frightened together.”

Despite himself, Dunstan smiles. “Good luck to us both.”

When Gwyndolin is done with his washing, he shines a candle in Dunstan’s eyes to check that Dunstan’s pupils react to the light. Gwyndolin is apparently satisfied with what he sees, because he pulls his blankets tight and curls up right on the dusty floor.

“Do not let me sleep,” he murmurs. “I have left Yorshka too long alone.”

“Rest your ankle and get warm, at least.”

“Do not let me sleep.”

“All right, if that’s what you want.”

But a few minutes later, when Gwyndolin’s breathing slows and deepens, Dunstan makes no attempt to rouse him. 

~~~

Eira.

A voice, touching her consciousness like grass on bare skin.

Eira.

Worn carpet and stones rasp at her back. A tang of incense pricks her nostrils and sharpens her awareness.

Eira. Speak to me.

That’s Miquella’s voice.

I’m here, Miq, she sends to him across their consorts’ bond.

Miquella’s relief washes over her thickly enough to quicken her pulse. Oh, ‘tis good to hear thee, consort mine! I had the most terrible feeling. Tell me you did not fall out of the sky. Tell me ‘twas naught but a dream.

Eira’s eyes flutter open to the dim silver torchlight of the dragon chapel. Through blurred vision, she can just make out the ranks of dragon-folk seated in meditation along the walls. Morgott is sitting near her, huge and dark, holding Gwynhael’s slumped form by the shoulders.

Eira snaps alert, remembering. She tries to sit up, but she gets no further than a few inches before a sharp pain spreads across one side of her chest. A bruised rib, she thinks, not broken. Nothing that rest and time won’t fix. Not bad, considering how far she must have fallen.

She realizes a second too late that she ought to have guarded these thoughts more carefully with Miquella listening.

Oh, grace, he says. His thought is an anxious whisper.

I’m all right, Eira says quickly, and turns her attention to Morgott. “What happened?”

Morgott quirks an eyebrow at her. “Good morrow, Tarnished.”

I sense injury, Miquella interjects. What have you done?

“Don’t bother telling me off,” Eira grumbles at Morgott. Her voice is still sluggish with receding unconsciousness. “Miquella’s getting ready to do it for you.”

Quite right. Eira, I thought you had learned better!

“Then I shall spare thee mine own judgment of thy recent…behavior,” Morgott says. “I shall say only that if ever again thou seek’st to shatter the sky, a word of warning would perhaps be prudent.”

“I knew you’d be all right. You have wings.”

Morgott’s lips twitch in what might under other circumstances be a smile. Most of him disapproves of Eira’s reckless audacity, but a small part of him doesn’t.

“Nevertheless.”

“There was no time, Gwynhael was on top of me -”

“I might have removed him from thee, hadst thou spared me but a moment.”

“I didn’t want you to pull him off me. I agreed to single combat, and that’s how I wanted to finish it.”

You promised me you would not do these things anymore, Miquella says. His soft, sad worry is far worse than any condemnation Morgott might offer.

I’m sorry. This time I had to. This might be my one chance to bring Gwynhael home.

As ever, you court death for your noble causes and spare nary a thought for me.

Eira closes her eyes. She has no energy for a marital quarrel on top of everything else. Don’t be like that. You love Lin too. You’d have done the same thing in my place.

Miquella doesn’t respond to that. He must know Eira has a point. He’s hardly a stranger to extreme decisions himself: this is, after all, the god who cut off his own limbs to prepare himself for ascension.

Eira pushes herself upright, easing herself past the bands of pain in her chest. “He’s not dead, is he?” she asks Morgott.

Morgott glances down at Gwynhael, hunched and unmoving between his hands. “Nay. His dragon caught him as he fell, and thee likewise. It may be he is quite spent. Whatever the cause, he is wise to be still.”

Eira can’t argue with that. If an Omen had her by the shoulders, she wouldn’t fancy her chances of escape either.

She edges gingerly forward and peers up into Gwynhael’s face, past the shadows and unruly white hair. The god’s eyes are dull and half-closed. His skin is weathered, as Eira observed before the battle, but now that she sees it up close, it strikes her differently. Gwynhael’s face bears more than the rough marks of wind and cold. There is something withered about his skin as well, like old parchment beginning to thin towards transparency.

“Gwynhael?” she murmurs.

The god flinches.

“It’s all right. You’re safe.” She decides she might as well try again to reach him, now that the fight is over: “Do you remember Lin?”

Gwynhael makes a hoarse, pained noise in his throat. That sound alone tells Eira his condition is far beyond her skill to repair.

“Keep him still,” she says.

Morgott nods. His hands tighten a little on Gwynhael’s shoulders. “Be wary, Tarnished.”

Slowly, Eira reaches up and rests her fingertips on Gwynhael’s brow. He flinches again but gives no sign of violence. His skin is papery beneath Eira’s fingers.

Miquella, she says to her god, I know you’re angry with me -

That is not the word I would choose.

- but you can be angry with me when I come home. You can sit me down and do all the healing you like and I won’t complain. I won’t even move. But just now I think I need your help.

Eira feels rather than hears Miquella sigh. 

This is Gwynhael, she says. He’s not well. Can you see into his mind if I touch him like this?

After a pause, Miquella says, Yes.

He says nothing more for a long while. Eira can sense him reaching out through her, looking through her eyes and probing through her fingertips. It’s a strange, not entirely pleasant feeling. Had she not willingly offered up her perception for Miquella’s use a moment ago, it would be downright disturbing. Fortunately, Miquella is very gentle with Eira’s mind. The battle at the Gate of Divinity taught him never to toy with her will. He knows better than to suppress her consciousness to make way for his. Sharing her mind with him is less like being knocked out and more like standing very close to him, with hips and shoulders touching.

That does not mean, however, that they can share everything. Eira has blind spots Miquella does not. No matter how perfect their bond, she cannot look into others’ minds as he can. She has no idea what he sees through the channel of her fingers on Gwynhael’s brow. To Eira, Gwynhael appears no different than before: flat-eyed and limp.

Eventually, Miquella withdraws, becoming once more a voice skimming the surface of Eira’s awareness like light on water.

Bring him to Leyndell, he says. As soon as Lin returns from the painted world, bring him as well.

This does not reassure Eira in the least. She hoped Miquella would give her an answer straightaway. He always seems to have answers.

Is it that bad? she asks. Is Gwynhael hollow?

If hollowing is, as I understand it, a loss of self, then no, he is not precisely hollow. His self is not lost. I suspect it is lost to him, however.

This makes very little sense to Eira. The intangible is Miquella’s specialty, not hers.

How can that be? she asks.

I shall explain further when you are home - and you had best come home, consort mine, or I shan’t forgive you.

Eira turns to Morgott, who is watching her closely. “Miquella wants to see Gwynhael in Leyndell.”

“Am I thus to assume,” Morgott says, “thou’rt privy to some means of returning to Leyndell?”

It occurs to Eira then that she does not know how she and Morgott are going to get home. They are a long way from Irithyll, never mind the Lands Between. Even if there were any lit bonfires on the peak, Eira doubts they would answer to a Tarnished from a foreign world. The rings Gwyndolin gave her and all her companions for traveling between Irithyll and Leyndell are the best chance.

Eira lifts her right hand, where she wears the little silver ring. “We can try -”

“So ‘twas true: you wield red lightning. Never in all my years have I seen its like.”

Eira turns at the sound of this low, clipped voice. A warrior is standing in the chapel doorway. He is lightly armored in battered leather reinforced with metal at the chest and shoulders. His only distinguishing accoutrement is the red plume fluttering from the crest of his helm; beyond this, he might be any wandering hedge knight. Eira can see at once, however, that this man is no mere vagabond. He holds himself with same practiced tautness as Gwynhael did before the duel began: a veteran warrior for whom fighting is a fact of life. A cross spear, longer and more slender than Gwynhael’s, stands in his hand.

Morgott’s left hand drops from Gwynhael’s shoulder and opens, loose but ready. Eira knows a golden dagger will appear there faster than thought should Morgott feel the need.

“What wouldst thou have of my lord?” the Omen King asks the newcomer.

The warrior’s back remains as straight as ever, showing no hint of intimidation. “I would inquire after my own lord’s well-being.”

Eira fixes her gaze on the point where her interlocutor’s eyes should be. “Are you Gwynhael’s knight? We’re not going to hurt him.”

The warrior’s grip slackens on his spear. “That name was scoured from the annals of history, yet you speak it as readily as your own.”

“Gwyndolin never forgot it.”

“The Dark Sun…lives?” 

“Better than ‘lives’, I’d say. That’s his moon you can see from the altar on the peak.”

“But the First Flame has been extinguished. Surely the Dark Sun would not permit such a thing while he drew breath.”

“He put it out himself, to save the world.”

Eira hears the warrior’s sharp intake of breath echo inside his helm.

“Do you think he was wrong?” she asks. If this knight is a friend of Fire, Eira may need to prepare for hostilities.

“I cannot condemn him,” the warrior answers. “I too deemed firelinking a fruitless pursuit before the end. I abandoned it when I followed my lord into exile.”

“Is that why you don’t talk like the gods? You’re not calling me ‘thou.’”

“I forsook the old speech when I forsook Anor Londo.”

“Well, Gwyndolin never forsook your lord. He calls Gwynhael home. He wants to see his brother again.”

“Thus you came hence in the Dark Sun’s name, and thus you laid low the storm.”

Eira smiles sheepishly before she can stop herself. “It was a draw, really.”

To her surprise, the warrior lifts off his helm, revealing a tangle of golden-red hair and green eyes flecked with amber. His sharp-angled face is scarred and worn, yet ageless in the manner of one touched by divinity. It is also etched with helpless confusion. It’s an unsettling expression to see on a man of such apparent confidence.

His eyes flick from Gwynhael to Eira and then linger on Morgott. “Might I approach?”

Morgott’s left hand curls inward a notch. “Address thyself to the Elden Lord, not to me.”

“I would, sir, were it not plain you are her protector and thus hold the final say. I see you have walked far on the Path of the Dragon.” 

“Nay, I have not. I was born to these horns and tail, and to the fire that burneth within me.”

Eira could swear she detects the beginnings of pride in Morgott’s voice.

The warrior puts a hand to his chest and dips his head. “Then you are greatly blessed. Our postulants will hold you in reverence, should you reveal your nature to them.”

“I seek no reverence. I am content with duty.” Morgott looks sidelong at Eira, who nods. “Very well. Approach.”

As a show of good faith, the warrior leans his spear in the chapel doorway before cautiously making his way to Gwynhael. He lowers himself to one knee and looks into the god’s face for a long, searching moment. Gwynhael’s sole response is to lift his hand, moving slowly like it costs him to remember how to do this, and clasp his knight’s wrist. Eira thinks he must be speaking directly into his comrade’s mind, because the lines around the knight’s mouth harden with repressed emotion.

“None have ever broken the storm of Archdragon Peak. For that my lord names you victor,” he says tightly. “His life is yours - that is our way. What is your intent?”

Eira tries to imagine how this proud knight feels to see his captain so reduced. What if it were Miquella or Morgott kneeling broken in front of her, their eyes as dulled as Gwynhael’s? What if a stranger came to take them away to a foreign land where Eira could have no part in their healing?

Thus it is with all the sympathy in her heart that she says, “I want to take him somewhere safe where we can help him.”

The knight exhales stiffly through his nose. “Then you know my lord is not… ‘Nay, ‘tis not my place to say.”

“Say, sir.”

“My lord is not himself. He has not been himself in many years. I confess I lost hope long ago that anyone can aid him. What healing arts do you possess, that you believe you can restore him?”

“My husband is…” Eira looks at Morgott, grasping for words to explain exactly what Miquella is. Miquella’s genius is difficult to describe.

“He is wise in the ways of the mind and soul,” Morgott supplies. “He wieldeth arts of his own devising, found nowhere else in this land or ours.”

“I don’t think there’s anything he can’t heal when he puts his mind to it,” Eira adds. “He’ll be able to help. He says Gwyndolin can help too.”

The knight assesses both Eira and Morgott again.

“If you are truly a friend of the Dark Sun and the Sun’s Firstborn, answer me this,” he says. “With what term of affection did my lord address his younger brother?”

Eira’s heart quickens. She should have expected a test like this. She cannot blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, either. If she gives the wrong answer, she may lose the knight’s tentative trust.

How she wishes Miquella were here. Miquella is good at this sort of thing.

“It can’t be ‘Lin’ you want,” she muses aloud. “That’s too obvious.”

The knight’s eyebrows lift. “Do you enjoy such familiarity with the Darkmoon deity as to call him Lin?”

“I helped save his life a few years ago. Someday I hope I have the chance to tell you that story.”

Eira casts back through all the tales Gwyndolin has told her about his family over the years, all the memories and details. Her mind keeps returning to one phrase, but it’s too misty to rely on. She might well have dreamed it, for all she knows.

Pinned by the knight’s catlike green eyes, she has no choice but to trust her instincts. 

If I’m wrong and he tries to keep Gwynhael from going with me, she thinks, I’ll just have to fight him. She does not stop to consider that she does not know where Gransax’s bolt is, if indeed it hasn’t fallen off the edge of the world. 

“Little dragon,” she says. “Gwynhael called him ‘little dragon.’ Because of his snakes.”

The knight closes his eyes, looking suddenly weary. “Very well.”

He puts his hand on the back of Gwynhael’s neck and bends his head forward so their brows touch. They stay that way for so long that Eira wonders if they’ve both fallen into meditation. Eventually she recognizes this as a private farewell and looks away, not wanting to intrude.

At last the knight straightens up. When he turns to Eira, his face is lined with worry and frustration. Eira knows what he must be feeling. He is a warrior, sworn to defend his lord, yet he cannot kill what is hurting Gwynhael now. Eira tasted the same helplessness herself, when Miquella burned the Haligtree and crashed down into grief. That feeling was more terrible and more painful than any death she had ever suffered.

“I wish you luck,” the knight says, solemn and resigned now. “May you succeed where all my efforts have failed.”

Privately, Eira has her doubts. She recognizes that flatness in Gwynhael’s eyes. She saw it in the soldiers she fought on her journey to the Erdtree, walking their patrols like empty golems, their sense of self long since worn away. If time and hardship have eroded Gwynhael’s personhood the same way…

I hope I’m wrong, she says to Miquella. You’d best have answers, love.

Come home and see, says her god.

Eira resists the urge to roll her eyes. Miquella is being mysterious, which he knows Eira hates, and no doubt he is doing it on purpose because he is upset with her.

She cups Gwynhael’s large hand in both her small ones. “There are dragons at home,” she tells him. “They visit us sometimes. You’ll like that.”

He doesn’t answer, of course, doesn’t so much as look at her. Eira didn’t expect him to. She simply believes in the power of a friendly voice.

“I will grant you passage,” the knight says. He has stood up, and his hands are folded over his cross spear. It’s almost the same pose Morgott assumes when he is praying.

Morgott meets Eira’s eye, silently telling her he senses something about to happen.

“No need,” Eira says. “We have rings that will take us home.”

“I insist,” says the knight.

Outside, the wind begins to whistle.

“May I have your name before we go?” Eira asks uneasily. The air smells electric again, like it did before the fight. She can almost taste the sparks.

The knight thumps the butt of his spear against the floor with a clang that echoes much further than it should.

“Ornstein.”

Wind roars through the chapel, guttering the torches and forcing Eira to hunch over and shield her eyes. When the gust passes, she lifts her head to find that the knight is gone. A pile of battered armor rests neatly on the floor in his place.

And outside, circling low on feathered wings, is the blue-scaled dragon Gwynhael rode into battle.

~~~

In the grand design, Friede’s church is no great distance from the corvian settlement. To Yorshka it might as well be in another world.

She is still too weak to be on her feet. She stumbles every few steps and falls into the snow, and it takes her a long time to push herself back up again. Soon her gloves are so soaked with melted snow that she has to take them off; her hands are more comfortable without them. She is cold. Irithyll’s chill has never bothered her, full of frost magic as she is, but Ariandel’s winds cut right through her cloak. More than anything, this is how she knows she isn’t well. She should have stayed in the corvian’s house and regained her full strength. 

But she had to go. For Gwyndolin and Dunstan, for Friede and Ariandel. For her mother and herself.

Sometimes Priscilla walks beside her daughter. Her feet leave no footprints. Her presence makes Yorshka think the kinds of things Gwyndolin tells her not to think: I stand in her place now. She wonders if she is delirious.

She has very little magic to spare, so when she can she relies on the mundane methods of concealment Morgott taught her. She sweeps her tail back and forth behind her to erase her tracks and stays off the well-trodden paths. When she does need to cast a vanishing spell, she covers her mouth with her cloak to keep her breath from misting in the air and giving away her position. That serves well enough to avoid the mosquitoes and horn-helmed knights. The wolves leave Yorshka alone. The greatwolf must have warned them off.

The birch women are another matter. Those the greatwolf did not kill earlier are roused, and they seem to see right through Yorshka’s invisibility. There is no way to keep away from them; they are scattered through the woods almost as thickly as they are along the trails. And evading the birch women is not like evading Morgott in training. If they grab ahold of Yorshka, they will not set her gently back on her feet with a word of advice as the Omen King would. She saw what they did to Dunstan.

Yorshka is terrified of them. Every time she passes one, her thoughts scatter and her heart pounds so hard she thinks she will faint. But the tactics Morgott taught her are ingrained in her body, not her mind, in a place her fear cannot reach. Led by instinct, she circles behind the birch women’s trunks and ducks their low-hanging boughs. Sometimes she slides down slopes to escape their grasping wooden fingers. And when all that fails, she runs. Even weak as she is, she is much more mobile than her foes.

Her efforts take their toll. By the time she finds herself trapped between two birch women, one on either side of her, she is exhausted. Her legs are leaden and her body chilled. She cannot run anymore. She can only stand here, swaying and shaking, and wait for death. She wonders if she should close her eyes so she will not see it when the little flames on the birch women’s branches burn her skin.

As the two trees lean in towards her, however, her thoughts are not death-thoughts. They are not for Gwyndolin or Dunstan. They consist of one word, a memory of Morgott’s voice: 

Drop.

Yorshka obeys.

Her body thumps into the snow, and the birch women ensnare each other instead of her. Their branches tangle. Their candle-blossoms ignite each other’s bark. Soon the air is full of shrieking and bright, bright flames.

Yorshka crawls away and curls up beneath a snowbank. The smell of boiling sap pastes itself onto the back of her throat. Shuddering, hands pressed to her ears, she waits for the screaming to stop.

It seems like an eternity before heavy footfalls come padding to her side. Yorshka feels it only dimly when the greatwolf bends to lick the tears from her face. Without a word from her, the animal nudges her up onto its back.

“I must see Lady Friede,” she mutters. It’s the only coherent idea left in her mind. 

The wolf growls its displeasure. 

Yorshka nuzzles her face into the thick gray fur. “Please.”

With one more reluctant rumble, the wolf sets off at a trot. Its warmth and loping gait soon lull Yorshka into a doze. She curls her hands around fistfuls of fur and pretends it is her mother’s robe.

Just before she drifts off, she thinks another strange thought: This land is mine now.

Slumped over the greatwolf’s back, Yorshka slips in and out of consciousness. Meanwhile, her guardian bears her unhesitatingly back to Friede’s church. Its claws clatter across the rope bridge and up the steps on the other side, past the prostrate corvians. There the greatwolf halts in the doorway. Steam rises from its nostrils while it waits for its rider to stir. It makes no attempt to conceal itself from Friede, who is still sitting in her chair by the altar. Let her see. Let her understand.

~~~

When Gwyndolin and Dunstan wake on the floor of the garret, the painter is gone.

When they return to the corvian settler’s house, Yorshka is gone too.

“Where is she?” Gwyndolin demands, trembling and white to the roots of his hair.

The corvian shrinks against his kitchen counter. “I could not keep her here! Had you seen her eyes…”

“Where is she?”

“Upon my life, sir, I do not know! She spoke only of leading Ariandel to fire!”

Dunstan glances at Gwyndolin. “You don’t think she went to…”

The god’s face goes paler still. “Nay. Please, nay.”

Then his fortitude leaves him, and he leans heavily into Dunstan’s side, and all Dunstan can do is hold him.

~~~

At last Yorshka lifts her head from its pillow of fur. She is warmer now, although her head is swimming and her mouth very dry. Her legs buckle when she slides from the greatwolf’s back, and she has to throw her arms around its neck to steady herself. She straightens up by careful degrees, testing her balance. When she is fairly certain she won’t fall, she stands on her toes to kiss the greatwolf. She can barely reach its lower jaw.

Her guardian licks her face once more and lies down on all fours. Its posture is relaxed, but its yellow eyes are alert. They promise swift retaliation should any harm come to Yorshka inside the church.

Yorshka makes her slow way up the center aisle, stopping whenever her legs wobble. It takes Friede a while to notice her. The woman’s head is tilted to one side and resting on her fist. She must be deep in thought, because she does not look up until Yorshka has reached the middle of the church.

“Dutiful one?” Friede says. “I thought thee gone to thy mother’s tower.”

“I…was not yet ready to stand where she stood.” Yorshka’s voice comes out thin and trembling. She clutches her cloak tighter to stave off the crumbling feeling inside her. “Might we speak a while?”

A tiny crease appears in the middle of Friede’s brow. She says neither yes or no, just stands up and extends a hand to Yorshka. The prayer beads hanging at her waist clack softly as she rises. 

“Come, child. Sit,” she says, ushering Yorshka to her own chair.

“I thank thee, my lady.” Yorshka sinks gratefully down onto the wooden seat. It takes much of her concentration to keep her head from lolling. 

Friede unclasps her black cloak and drapes it around Yorshka’s shoulders. “I fear I have little comfort to give thee. What befell thee, to leave thee so weak? Where are thy companions?”

Yorshka looks at the stone floor. 

“Ah. They know not of thy coming here,” Friede says. “’Tis unwise to wander Ariandel alone. These lands are not safe, even for Priscilla’s daughter.”

Yorshka’s eyes dart up to Friede’s face, which is inscrutable beneath her clerical veil. She opens her mouth to deny the truth, then thinks better of it. She will have to reveal everything before this conversation is over; why not start now? Indeed, Yorshka may already have made Friede suspicious by coming to the church alone. 

So she nods. “I am who thou sayest.”

Friede settles herself on the floor beside the chair. “And thy Darkmoon Knight is…”

“…my brother. Gwyndolin of Irithyll.”

“Thy brother? The old sun sired a dragon child?”

“Nay, I am Gwyndolin’s kin not by blood but by love and loyalty. He succored me in Anor Londo when my mother was slain, and gave me my chime and my name.”

Yorshka hopes this will soften Friede, perhaps show her that Gwyndolin is not heartless and need not be her enemy. But the woman shakes her head as though she knew this was coming and is now bracing herself for unpleasant consequences.

“I sensed Fire in him,” she murmurs.

“I see him much in thee, my lady.”

Friede almost smirks. “Dost thou indeed? And thou comest hence in his stead?”

“I come in mine own.”

“What wouldst thou have of me?”

Best to come right out with it, Yorshka thinks. That was what Gwyndolin did when he announced his intent to end Fire.

She straightens up beneath her two cloaks. “I would have thee know of the suffering beyond thy walls,” she says, willing herself not to shrink from recalling the horrors she has seen. “There is a rot in this land. It devoureth the stones and the grasses and the waters. Great flies drink of Ariandel’s blood. The trees assail travelers. Corvians slaughter their own, and those who live have naught but poisoned water to ease them, and I cannot - I cannot save them.” 

Yorshka blinks back tears. All for want of fire, she wants to say, but she cannot finish.

Friede understands nonetheless. Now it’s her turn to look at the floor. “I know what thou wouldst ask, and it is impossible.”

“Why so?”

“I cannot tell thee. Thou wilt not see.”

“In the painting, we burn the old world so the new may live - ’tis known. ’Tis right and good, my mother taught me.”

“We?” Friede’s head snaps up, and her voice goes hard. “By thine own words, thou’rt sworn kin to a god, reared in Anor Londo from thy youth. Their ways are thy ways now. Ariandel is no longer thine home. And thou think’st to instruct me in what is best for this land?”

Yorshka loses her breath. She did not choose to leave Ariamis; she was driven from it with her mother’s blood on her clothes! Gwyndolin took her in when she was lost and alone. Is she wrong to love him for that? Can she not love him and the painted world both?

She swallows her hurt and reaches for Friede’s hands. “Ariandel crieth out for fire -”

Friede shakes her head again, her mouth twisting. “What knowest thou of fire? What knowest thou of burning?”

Her chest is heaving beneath her gray dress.

Yorshka closes her eyes to escape Friede’s smoldering gaze. Now is the time to be a healer, but what can she do? She doubts even her chime could soothe Friede’s fear, and beyond that she has nothing else to offer - only her own memories. That will have to be enough. Use what thou’rt given, Morgott would tell her.

She chooses her words with care.

“Not so long ago, a tyrant came to my city. He took me and my brother captive,” she begins. “For months the traitor held me in a tower alone. One day he gave to me a severed finger and said ’twas Gwyndolin’s. I knew not where my brother had gone or if he was in torment. I knew not if he lived - he who named me Yorshka and gave me life anew, he who was all my kin in the world. That was burning to me.”

Friede’s mouth is still set in a grim line, but her eyes have softened. “Thy dread, thy burning, was not as mine. Thou wert not consumed by the First Flame.”

“Even now I fear for my brother when he is away,” Yorshka goes on, determined to reach the heart of what she is saying. “I fear some dreadful fate will befall him and he will be lost to me again. Yet ‘twould be terribly cruel of me to lock him away. His adventures bring him such happiness. I cannot deny him that, however frightened I may be, for I love him and wish him happiness always.”

The Unkindled woman is silent for a long while. Her eyes drift towards the bonfire that so clearly disquiets her.

“I hear thee,” Friede says at last. “If I love Ariandel, ’tis cruel of me to lock its flame away, however frightened I may be.” She sighs and touches Yorshka’s hair. “It is not so simple. Would that it were.”

“’Twas not simple for my brother to put out the First Flame.”

Genuine surprise flits across Friede’s face. “Allfather Gwyndolin put out the First Flame?”

“He did. An Unkindled went to the kiln beside him, the same man who came to Ariandel with us.”

“He who would not be Yuria’s Lord of Hollows.” Some of the fear fades from Friede’s face, replaced by curiosity. “And what possessed a child of Gwyn to betray Fire?”

“Our world was burning to ashes, my lady. ’Twas rotting.”

Friede smiles, half sorrow and half approval. “Thou’rt persistent, I grant thee.” Then she sobers again. “Tell me, how fared the Allfather when his deed was done? What strength found he to endure?”

“He…wept and slept a great deal.”

“I imagine so.”

“And when he had gathered himself, he made of Dark a beautiful new city. We of Irithyll made it together.”

“Then he was not alone. That is a gift.”

The sadness in Friede’s face reminds Yorshka of Gwyndolin on his worst days, sitting exhausted before Gwyn’s tomb, having sent another Undead to link the flame and knowing he must now begin the deception all over again. They are so alike, he and Friede: two solitary guardians afraid to let go of their dying worlds.

When Yorshka reaches for Friede’s hands this time, the Unkindled does not pull away. Yorshka feels leathery burn scars beneath her fingers. “Thou need’st not be alone.”

“Bless thine innocence, child! I have no place in the world beyond. The Sable Church will not have me now, nor I them. Named for the dragon of spring thou art, but thou wilt not make me to bloom. I can only burn with Ariandel or rot with it.”

“So Gwyndolin once believed. The hour was too late for change, thought he. Naught remained but for him to fall to ash with Lothric.”

Friede glances warily at the chapel ceiling, as though there is something frightful upstairs. “Mine hour is late also. Though I dare not believe it, I sense the new creation is already begun.”

“Couldst thou not share in it?” Yorshka slips unsteadily off her chair, suddenly remembering how tired she is, and looks up at Friede. “Couldst thou not do as my brother did, and make a goodly new home for the forlorn?”

When Friede speaks, her voice is almost plaintive. “This is mine home.”

“’Tis not. This is no fit home for any creature.”

“Oh, sweet one.” Friede touches Yorshka’s face, and all Yorshka’s hopes waver on a knife’s edge. “’Tis the only home I know.”

Chapter Text

Morgott has never ridden a dragon before today. He stood very close to those who came from Farum Azula to sweep away the ash of the burnt Erdtree, but to touch something so powerful is another matter entirely. Each beat of the mighty feathered wings vibrates through him. He can feel muscles rippling beneath the scaly skin, and beneath the muscles, a slow heartbeat, and beneath the heartbeat, fire. What a marvelous creature it is! In this beast, multiple aspects of the Crucible converge in perfect order. Morgott finds that very pleasing.

It is the sense of weightlessness that strikes him most. To Gwynhael’s dragon - Ornstein transfigured, he knows now - he seems to be no more burden than a child. He, a full-grown Omen! Imagine that!

Morgott thought it would frighten him to feel so small. Instead, he feels much like he does when he stands before the Erdtree: that he is in the presence of something sacred and whole. Sacred because it is whole, perhaps. He finds he doesn’t mind letting this dragon take command for a while. He doesn’t often have the chance to lean on something larger than himself.

The Tarnished, seated in front of him on the dragon’s neck with her arms around Gwynhael’s waist, looks back and catches Morgott’s eye. Unlike him, this is not her first dragon ride (of course it isn’t, the reckless girl), and she is clearly eager to see Morgott’s reaction.

She grins at him through her tangle of windblown hair. “You never thought you’d touch the sky, did you?” she calls over the wind.

“Nay, Tarnished, fain would I keep my feet firmly earthbound.”

Once he would have meant that; not now. He is not afraid to fall. In truth he feels quite at home here, high above the earth, with the wind streaming through his hair and fur. 

The Tarnished knows that too. The gleam in her eye tells Morgott so.

~~~

Dragon-Ornstein sets them down on the steps of Anor Londo, much to the astonishment of the four Darkmoon Knights standing moonlight duty.

I must leave you here, he says into Eira’s mind as she slips from his back. To be a dragon is to be bound to this land, eternal. I cannot pass the border into yours.

“That’s all right. The rings will take us the rest of the way from here.” 

Eira says this through hissing breaths. It’s all she can do not to hunch over. The flight sharpened the pain of her bruised ribs and she yearns for Miquella’s care, even if he is angry with her.

Nonetheless, should any harm befall my lord, I feel certain I shall know it.

“He’s in good hands with us. This isn’t the first time I’ve brought home someone lost. Lin could tell you that.”

Dragon-Ornstein rumbles softly in his throat. Very well. Hold to your word.

He lifts one claw, easily as long as Eira’s leg. Jagged bronze glints beneath it. Morgott spares Eira the pain of stooping to pick up the object, for which she is grateful, and places it across her open palms: Gransax’s bolt, warm despite its journey through the sky. 

Eira runs a finger lovingly over her spear’s pointed edges. “Thank you,” she tells the dragon. “I was afraid it was lost.”

‘Tis a fine weapon. Keep it well.

Dragon-Ornstein bends towards Gwynhael, who rests his hand on the huge scaly head. Eira sees a silent exchange pass between them, as it did in the chapel on the peak. As before, she cannot hear their words, and she doesn’t need to. The dragon’s neck, coiled loosely around Gwynhael, speaks plainly enough: All will be well. Return to me.

When at last the moment passes, dragon-Ornstein sweeps them all with his amber eyes. 

May we meet again, he says. 

Then he is gone, lifting off the steps in a burst of snow and wind that would have knocked Eira over if not for Morgott’s hand on her shoulder. He circles once around the spires of Irithyll before turning back towards the distant peak and vanishing into the fog. Gwynhael watches him go all the while. Eira takes that as a good sign. He clearly recognizes Ornstein, and he seemed to recognize Gwyndolin’s nickname as well. If he hasn’t forgotten the people who were once important to him, there is hope for him yet.

Eira leaves Gwynhael under Morgott’s watchful eye and approaches the four Darkmoon Knights standing at the base of the steps. They are all wide-eyed with shock and wonder. It’s a testament to their power that the moon hasn’t gone out, because none of them are focused on their illusion just now. At the sight of Eira, they all open their mouths to speak. 

She lifts a hand before they can start talking at once. “The dragon was a friend. The city is safe. Tell the people not to be afraid.”

One of the knights, a silver-haired Irithyllian youth named Cecily, points delicately over Eira’s shoulder. “Who is…?”

Eira glances back at Gwynhael, whose head is still tipped back towards the sky. “That’s not for me to say, not yet. When your captain comes back from Ariandel, just tell him Miquella wants to see him in Leyndell. It’s important.”

Cecily’s pale eyes, so like Gwyndolin’s, linger on Gwynhael. He may well suspect the newcomer’s identity. Everyone in Gwyndolin’s inner circle knows Gwynhael’s name and legacy, and really, who else would come flying in on a dragon, dressed like a statue of the old gods come to life?

In the end, Cecily’s decorum overrides his curiosity. He gives Eira a solemn “Yes, ma’am,” and turns to usher his comrades back into line on the steps. Eira blesses his discretion. The last thing Gwynhael needs right now is a cohort of curious young people asking him endless questions. Miquella will do enough of that himself, if Eira knows him at all.

Wild rumors thus contained, Eira returns to the Omen and the god. She presses her hand to her throbbing side and smiles dryly at the sense of repetition. It wasn’t so many years ago she departed Anor Londo wounded but victorious, having snatched Gwyndolin from the jaws of fate. Now she walks the same path with Gwyndolin’s brother.

As always, her instinct is to offer reassurance through touch, but she restrains herself, not knowing how Gwynhael will respond. She compromises by making her voice as warm and gentle as she can. “It’s all right,” she tells the god. “Lin came this way before you, if it comforts you. This is all going to seem very strange, but it’s for your own good.”

Gwynhael looks doubtfully at his right hand, so empty and forlorn without his swordspear. The weapon must have been an anchor for him, the sole certainty left in his world. And then Eira realizes it’s not a hand Gwynhael needs to hold.

Against all wisdom, Eira offers Gransax’s bolt to him, hilt first. “Hold onto this a while. It might steady your nerve. Just hold it, mind you, don’t use it. Can you promise me that?”

Gwynhael eyes the spear for a long moment. Eira does not retract it, though she can sense Morgott holding back a vehement protest. Then slowly, moving like someone who has not used his hands in a very long time, Gwynhael reaches out and curls his fingers around the leather-wrapped hilt. At his touch, red sparks snap along the weapon’s edges.

“It likes you,” Eira remarks.

Beneath all the shadows and lines of hardship, a tiny smile softens Gwynhael’s mouth.

~~~

The spear is too light and slender in his hand. The cords of muscle in his arm don’t stand out when he holds it at his side. That doesn’t matter: it is a weapon and it has lightning in it, and that is familiar. It’s something to grasp.

And he needs something to grasp, because nothing else is familiar. After ages of sameness, change has come too fast. His mind swims when he tries to reconstruct the chain of events that led him so swiftly from there to here.

The city to which Eira’s ring delivered him is one part fortress and one part shrine. The walls are thick and the soldiers upon them stand with disciplined stillness, and when the bells toll noon they all lift their voices in a hymn. Knights in red-gold armor walk the streets with iridescent tails trailing behind them. Great boughs serve as living roads between the upper levels of the buildings. And it’s all so bright, bright like his own world was when he was young. A luminous tree as high as Archdragon Peak canopies the city in fiery leaves that hurt his dark-accustomed eyes. Is it a sort of First Flame? He has never seen anything so huge and alive. Even an everlasting dragon would have to crane its neck to glimpse the top of it. 

And there is an everlasting dragon here, or something like it. It looms over the city, either dead or turned to stone, wings shadowing the streets. With one hand it grasps at the buildings, and with the other it clutches a much larger incarnation of the spear now resting in Gwynhael’s hand. Lightning caught in metal. So the dragons wield lightning in this land? Gods, everything is backwards here.

He says so to the young woman - Eira - walking beside him. At least, he tries. Of late his voice has a tendency to disappear on the way from his mind to his mouth. The only clear word that comes out is “backwards”; the rest is a low mumble.

Eira seems to grasp his meaning nonetheless. “Lin said the same when I first brought him to Leyndell. He must have thought he’d been kidnapped by raving heretics when we told him fire used to be considered sinful. He got used to it, and you will too.”

Lin. That name again. He knows Lin: Lin was someone important, someone he cared for. That much he has not lost. The details are gone, however, drowned deep in mist along with the rest of himself. If he concentrates very hard he catches a glimpse of a tiny person dressed all in white, but no matter how he tries, he cannot withdraw those memories from the mist. They slip away just when he thinks he has grasped them, leaving nothing but a vague warmth edged with sadness. So close and yet unreachable.

Frustration sweeps through him, as it does every time he hears that name. Eira told him he bestowed it upon Lin himself - so did the sister he has likewise forgotten - so why can he not remember? Why did he let so much go? When in all those long years on the peak did he lose himself so utterly as to forget his own family? His fists clench and that low, animal sound rasps from his throat again. He hates it. It is a pathetic sound, a wounded sound, and it is his only means of giving voice to his hurt.

It shames him to admit it, but he is afraid. He has probably been afraid for a long time. 

His fear must be obvious, because Eira slows to look into his face. He wishes she would stop looking and get a move on. They are walking down the middle of an avenue wide enough for three wagons to drive abreast with room to spare, and it unsettles him. Ordinarily he likes openness - more space to maneuver and swing a weapon. Now, it’s too much space. Surrounded by foreignness, removed from what little is still familiar, he longs for the confines of a small room. Preferably one with answers in it.

To her credit, Eira does not touch him. She seems to understand that although he does not mind being touched, that is not the sort of comfort he needs. 

Instead, she says, “What can I do for you? Tell me how to help.”

That is what he needs: a bit of agency to offset the helplessness gaping beneath his feet.

He looks up at the ancient dragon frozen in stone. Although he knows it cannot hear him, he prays, Grant me certainty. Make straight my path.

He tightens his grip on Eira’s spear, warm and thrumming beneath his hand. “Tell me of Lin,” he says. This time all the words come out clear.

“Right,” Eira says, nodding. To his relief she accepts his request just like that, with no further questions. “Lin - Gwyndolin is his given name - is an illusionist. A good one, maybe the best. Magic is life and breath to him. He was…in a bad way the first time I brought him here, but that didn’t stop him from trying to work out whether the Erdtree is real.”

If he hoped this would unleash a flood of memories, it does not. Yet something about it feels right.

~~~

Gwynhael’s arrival in Leyndell is far less dramatic than Gwyndolin’s. He is not critically wounded and dying, for one thing. For another, there is something of the Crucible’s wildness about him. He does not look at all out of place in this city. In fact, his mane of white hair and muscular, half-bare arms remind Eira of a portrait of Godfrey she saw at Roundtable Hold. 

Gwynhael walks beside Eira all the way up to the Erdtree Sanctuary, across cobbles and boughs. He is steadier with Eira’s spear in hand. The sight of Gransax’s stone form breaching the city walls seems to soothe him as well. It’s a sight that might easily be found on Archdragon Peak, where it would be cause for reverence. 

Despite these small improvements, Gwynhael remains largely silent. The longer he goes without speaking, the more Eira’s doubts grow. She can only pray Gwynhael recovers somewhat before his brother comes home, or Gwyndolin is sure to be heartbroken.

Eira hopes Miquella will be upstairs in his room. She needs to prepare herself to see her husband, who is undoubtedly upset with her. No such luck: Miquella waylays her and Gwynhael in the foyer of the Erdtree Sanctuary. Agitation is written in the swish of his white robes against his legs. His gaze falls on Eira first, taking in her ginger movements - by now the pain is squeezing her chest and she knows she must be pale. He turns to Gwynhael with obvious reluctance. His face shifts and cools as he sits down on a root emerging from the floor and gestures for Gwynhael to do the same. Eira sees the effort it costs him to bury his anxiety behind his kindly healer’s mask.

“I am Miquella,” he says, “husband to Eira and friend to Gwyndolin. Has my consort told you I have some skill in healing troubled minds?”

Gwynhael nods. His eyes flick from one corner of the room to another - a warrior’s alertness.

“Am I lost?” he asks. His voice is rusty with disuse.

“Not quite, I think,” Miquella says. “I shall know more now you are here with me. Will you permit me to look into your mind once more?”

Gwynhael nods again. He does not resist when Miquella takes his face gently in both hands, though his body stiffens. 

“I imagine you feel quite overcome,” Miquella goes on. His eyes are closed and roving rapidly behind the lids, as if he is dreaming. “Be not afraid. My companions and I were all lost once, in one way or another: you are in good company.”

They lapse into silence, these two gods from two worlds. Neither of them moves save for the flicker of Miquella’s closed eyes. After a while, Gwynhael’s eyes fall shut and begin to rove as well. Eira wonders if Miquella has put them both to sleep.

At last, Miquella’s placid brow furrows and he takes a sharp little breath. “Ah. Walls,” he murmurs. He lifts his hands from Gwynhael’s face and opens his eyes. “I know what has happened to you.”

Gwynhael surfaces from the trance, blinking slowly. He mutters something that ends in “hollow.”

Miquella folds his hands in his lap: his teacherly posture. “Not so. It seems your difficulty arose from your attempts to protect yourself from hollowing, if that term may be applied to a god.”

Eira suspects this conversation will very soon pass beyond her comprehension.

“You appear to have locked away the most precious parts of yourself - your memories, your deepest emotions, the names and faces of people you love - to safeguard them from the decay of time and hardship. Warriors who fight many battles often do so.” Miquella’s mouth tightens. “My sister was no exception.”

Gwynhael’s knuckles whiten on Gransax’s bolt. “Why…”

“Why can you no longer reach these parts of yourself?” Miquella suggests. “You have simply gone too far. ’Tis likely you were not aware of what you were doing until it was too late. Over the course of many years, the walls you built around yourself have grown so thick as to become impenetrable even to yourself.”

Eira’s stomach clenches. “Then you can’t help him, Miq?”

“I did not say so.” A faint smile curves Miquella’s lips. He does so love a puzzle. “I shall require extraordinary measures, however.”

He takes one of Gwynhael’s large hands and bends it upright, palm out.

“You see, I could throw myself against your walls if I wished,” he continues, tapping his knuckles against Gwynhael’s palm. “I could exhaust myself in the hope of breaching them. Very likely ‘twould accomplish naught, and harm us both.”

Gwynhael is watching Miquella closely now, more attentive than Eira has seen him since Ornstein said farewell.

“But as I am certain you know,” Miquella says, “there is more than one way to conduct a siege. We need not resort to trebuchets and battering rams. We need only enlist the aid of someone familiar, someone for whom you might open your gates just enough to slip inside.”

Miquella spreads Gwynhael’s fingers and slots his own between them.

“Lin,” Eira says.

“Just so,” Miquella concludes. “If you are agreeable, I will take your brother with me into your dreams, and he will bring down your walls from within.”

Gwynhael’s long years seem to fall away. For a moment he is not the god of war, the undefeated ruler of Archdragon Peak. His shadowed gaze fixes almost plaintively on Miquella’s face.

“Is this possible?”

“Yes,” Miquella says. “My companions and I did battle with an outer god in much the same way. Fortunately, you are neither an outer god nor an enemy. ’Twill be considerably less of an ordeal for you, I think.”

It’s times like these, when Miquella is at the height of his ingenuity and compassion, that Eira loves him most. With him as with no one else, she is content to be still and watch.

Miquella has an answer, Lin, she thinks with wonder. Your brother’s going to be all right, and you’re going to help him.

“Lin is away just now,” she says. “He’s looking for a way to protect your world from firelinking. When he’s home, I’m sure he’ll want to come straight here.”

“In the meantime, I fear you must wait,” Miquella says. “Rest here a while. Take in the light and the warmth. See the dragons if they come calling. Should any of your memories return, so much the better, but do not attempt to force them. That may only drive them deeper.”

Gwynhael folds his fingers around Miquella’s, a poignant gesture from so large and powerful a man.

“Let it be done.”

For the first time since their battle, Eira hears old Anor Londo in the god’s voice.

~~~

With Gwynhael delivered to Ursa’s care, Miquella takes Eira upstairs to her room. He sits her down on the edge of her bed with a touch that brooks no argument. Working with practiced efficiency, he undoes the laces of Eira’s combat leathers and slips off the shirt underneath, which reveals the ugly purple bruise spreading across one side of her chest. His eyes flicker shut at the sight of it. When they open again, Miquella is all brittle silence once more. He never lifts his gaze from his well-trained hands as he probes for broken bones and sends out healing magic.

He is very close to Eira when he finishes his examination, closer than he needs to be. His breath is warm and shaky on Eira’s neck.

Remorse needles Eira’s insides. Miquella’s subtle displays of emotion often mask deep distress. “Miq?” she ventures.

The bedsprings creak as Miquella climbs up and kneels behind Eira. His fingers thread into her hair and begin to braid. Eira would have found it relaxing did she not know it is another signifier of Miquella’s unease.

“My hair’s too short for this,” she says, trying to break the tension.

“‘Tis not. Hush.”

Eira lets him braid in silence. It does not take him long to weave two small plaits and tie them together at the back of Eira’s head, leaving the rest of her hair loose. When he finishes, his hands hover above Eira’s bare shoulders, only just brushing her skin. Eira holds very still and listens for the things Miquella can only say with his touch. The slight tremors in his fingers whisper, Godwyn is gone. Radahn is gone. Malenia is beyond my reach. Not you too.

“I’m sorry, love,” she says softly. “I never meant to scare you.”

Miquella makes a small, smothered noise. His head tips forward and his hair tickles the back of Eira’s neck.

“‘Twas not lightly I gave you my heart, consort mine. I do wish you would not treat your life as a plaything.”

“I don’t. I don’t want to leave any of you.”

“Then how is it all your battles end with such desperate risks?”

“I didn’t have time to think. Gwynhael was on top of me and I had to do something. If you’d been in my place, you’d understand.”

“And would I also understand why you offered your hand to Aldrich’s teeth?” Miquella sighs, then mutters, “If you deemed it necessary, I suppose it was. You are here now. Gwynhael is here. I shall recover.”

Eira reaches back and lays her hand alongside Miquella’s head. His golden hair is silky beneath her fingers. “And shall I?”

Miquella leans around Eira’s side so she can see his face, which is stern and achingly beautiful. “You shall not run, ride, or exert yourself in any way until I judge you fully healed. Certainly you shall not fight.”

Eira resists the urge to groan. She’s going to go mad, cooped up in the Erdtree Sanctuary with silent Gwynhael for company. “What can I do, then?”

“You might have considered that before you saw fit to fall out of the sky. Mark me, Eira, if you so much as venture near the colosseum…”

Miquella never finishes the sentence. His voice trails off and he shakes his head and blinks helplessly at Eira a few times, and then he cups her face in his hands and kisses her, and that says everything he has left to say.

~~~

The bonfire on the outer wall of the Undead Settlement finds an answering flame. It deposits Sirris and Amalie in the courtyard of an imposing stone keep flanked by statues of figures in scholars’ robes and hoods. Sirris recognizes this place. Dunstan summoned her to the bridge just before this courtyard to help him battle the suit of Dragonslayer armor those horrible butterflies brought to life. The keep ahead, then, can only be Lothric’s Grand Archives. 

At least, it was the Grand Archives when last Sirris came here. Now the vats of wax in which the archivists dipped their heads to protect them from cursed tomes have gone hard with disuse. No candle-headed scholars wander the maze of bookshelves with wax drips on their shoulders. Ages of knowledge stand untouched. The halls are empty and dark.

That does not mean they are devoid of life, however - far from it. In fact, the Grand Archives are blossoming with humanity. It is woven into trellises in the corridors and dancing atop every candlestick. It smokes from the eyes and mouths of statues. Sprites swing lazily in the air above the wax vats with expressionless white eyes. Once, Amalie reaches out to touch them and Sirris knocks her hand away.

“It’s so calm,” Amalie marvels, as she did on the ramparts. “I’ve never seen so much humanity so calm.”

Neither has Sirris, and she doesn’t like it. In the past, high concentrations of humanity gave rise to the writhing, screeching pus of man, and she has no desire to encounter another one of those. Humanity is changeable and volatile by nature. Even without Fire to stagnate it into corruption, there’s no telling what it might do.

“Humanity is never calm for long,” Sirris tells Amalie. She should be exultant, she knows, to see the gifts of humankind on full display, but her whole body is clenched with anxiety instead. There is too much raw energy here, and more disturbing still, someone to bend it into all the oddly beautiful forms adorning the castle as well. Such a person - or such people, more likely, is to be feared.

As usual, Amalie is not afraid. “It’s calm because it isn’t pushing against Fire anymore. It’s free.” 

Before Sirris can stop her, Amalie puts her hand under one of the sprites. It swings there for a moment, then sinks into her hand. Amalie smiles in delight. Sirris, on the other hand, feels faintly sick.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” Amalie says. “This is how it was always supposed to be. This is how it would have been if not for the firelinking. What’s wrong? You’ve shared humanity in battle before.”

Sirris has, but reluctantly. However useful humanity may be as a quick source of energy and healing, Sirris has never quite overcome her distrust of it. All her life she was taught that the dark essence of humankind was a horror to dread, a temptation to hold in check. Vereor nox, said the Way of White. The dark is unnatural, the dark is dangerous. These creeds are still etched on Sirris’s mind, even though Gwyndolin himself spins illusions out of darkness now. To her, standing in the middle of so much free humanity is like trying to breathe water. She knows this should be the clearest, most invigorating air she’s ever tasted. Instead, she is sure she will drown.

Far from drowning, Amalie is radiant. As Sirris watches, she kisses her own palm where the sprite touched her: not pious like a saint before a relic, but tender, as if the humanity were her beloved child. The girl has never shown such solemnity before, not even on moonlight duty with Gwyndolin beside her. 

When Amalie lifts her eyes, she extends that same hand to Sirris. “Just take it. You did me a kindness in the settlement, and you look like you could use one now.”

Sirris looks from Amalie’s tiny hands to her own. One is squeezed into a fist and the other is a vice around the hilt of her estoc. She tells herself the metal beneath her fingers is all the comfort she needs. She is a senior officer: accepting reassurance from her junior is beneath the dignity and responsibilities of her rank. Bad enough she let Amalie hold her hand in the settlement.

But Amalie is right: Sirris is afraid, and she could use a hand.

“I am a knight, not a child,” she says. 

The coldness of Sirris’s own voice startles her. It’s as if the humanity is amplifying it and echoing it back to her. Does she always sound like that? Is that how she sounded to Dunstan when she first met him and told him she saw little point in fraternization? She only meant to be practical, like her lord.

Amalie hears it too. She does not withdraw her hand, though her smile hardens. “You know, you might be less unhappy if you didn’t push away everyone who isn’t the captain and Lady Yorshka.”

The accuracy of that assessment stings more than Sirris wants to admit. “You are insubordinate.”

“I am, but someone’s got to say it. You don’t have to be lonely. You make yourself alone. That’s just what the captain wouldn’t want for you.” 

“And you know what Master Gwyndolin wants for me?” Sirris retorts, bristling despite herself.

Amalie leans on the edge of the nearest wax vat and folds her arms, the posture she assumes when she is bracing for a fight. “I know he doesn’t want any of us to be lonely, and he doesn’t want worship either.”

“He asks for loyalty and duty.”

“That’s not the same. He’s just a person like us, ma’am. Even when he was a god, he was just a person like us. You treat him like a statue too holy to be touched. Let him be himself. Let him go, and let yourself go too.”

“I do not presume any claim on him. I know he is not for me.”

The humanity is fizzing up around Amalie. She still hasn’t put her veil back on, and the dark sprites are coiling through her braids and ringing her head like laurels. The effect is bizarre and lovely.

“You still want him, though,” Amalie argues. “You want something you can’t have - and not because the captain is too good for you, but because what you want isn’t real.”

Dimly it occurs to Sirris that the reason Amalie infuriates her so much is that Amalie is everything Sirris might be were she not so much of a rule-follower. Free-spirited, adventurous, unorthodox and unafraid. 

This logic does not keep anger from burning through Sirris’s restraint. “Of course it is real!”

“It isn’t,” Amalie says piercingly. “You’ve said more than enough about the captain for me to know that. You talk about Dark Sun Gwyndolin like he was perfect and noble, but he wasn’t like that, Sirris! He was miserable, sick as often as not, and he had no one to comfort him until he met Lady Yorshka. He disliked almost everyone in the world, himself most of all. I know that because he’s said so. You must know it too; the captain doesn’t make a secret of it.”

Sirris loses her breath, mostly because Amalie is right. Sirris is blind where her lord is concerned, still devoted to the god who watched her fence from beneath his veils and then put his miracle in her little-girl hands. She does not want to admit that Lin, who behaves nothing like that god, is much happier than Allfather Gwyndolin ever was.

She blinks rapidly against the burning in her eyes. She wishes she were wearing her veil. “You say I am in love with an illusion.”

“That’s the truth of it.” 

“You would not understand,” Sirris says tightly. It’s the only thing she can think to say.

Amalie rolls her eyes. “Did you listen to the story I told you in the settlement? I’ve got ghosts myself, ma’am. Whatever you’re hiding, I’ll understand.”

This is likely true, and Sirris cannot deny it would be a relief. But to explain why she worships Gwyndolin so would require her to explain her grandfather and her shameful behavior during Sulyvahn’s coup, and she cannot do that. Gwyndolin may be the only person who ever hears that sorry tale.

“Enlighten me,” she says instead. “If I am lonely because I am in love with something I contrived for myself, what am I to do?”

“Let the captain be real. And there are other real people who will care about you too, if you’ll let them. The Darkmoon Knights, for a start - even me.”

Sirris laughs. “You?” 

“Me. I’m not a god, I’m not the moon, I’m just a person and I’m here.”

Amalie is very close to Sirris all of a sudden, almost chest to chest. The humanity sprites scatter from her hair in a halo of black smoke. Some of the drifting particles settle perfectly onto her freckles. In the dark her green eyes are luminous and fierce. Despite her small stature and commoner’s accent, she looks as regal as any queen.

Sirris’s heart stumbles a little.

“So take my hand,” says Amalie. 

And without understanding why, Sirris does.

~~~

The humanity only thickens as they walk deeper into the Grand Archives, a haze that clouds the corridors and puffs from the paving stones beneath their feet. The air grows humid with it. While it leaves Sirris alone for the most part, it bedecks Amalie, trailing from her wrists like the gauzy shawls Gwyndolin sometimes wears to balls. It seems attracted to her. Perhaps her mind and soul are open to it in a way Sirris’s cannot be.

On the rooftops, the hulks of Winged Knight armor serve in place of gargoyles. Someone has posed the metal suits atop arches, kneeling with one hand wrapped around a halberd or axe. Humanity buzzes in their helmets’ eye slits and ruffles the ornamental wings on their backs. 

Amalie is so preoccupied with them that she almost falls off the rooftops more than once. When Sirris finally demands to know what is so fascinating about empty armor, Amalie says, “Their helmets are following us.”

“Be not foolish. This is not a children’s ghost story.”

“Really, ma’am, watch.” 

Amalie looks up at the nearest suit of armor, set atop a buttress. She turns her head slowly from one side to the other. To Sirris’s immense disquiet, the empty helmet turns with her.

Instinctively, Sirris’s voice drops to a whisper. “Someone may be watching. Are these suits of armor illusory?”

“I don’t think so…” Amalie cocks her head. “We could throw something at them and find out. That dispels most illusions. Dunstan said so.”

“Dunstan says far too much.”

Without warning, Amalie leans back and shouts at the armor. “Hey! Company Captain Gwyndolin of Irithyll sent us! We’re looking for Lady Gwynevere!”

Disconcerted as she is by the humanity boiling in the air, Sirris takes too long to respond. By the time she claps her hand to Amalie’s mouth, the words are already ringing off every shingle and stone.

“Have you lost your mind?” Sirris hisses. 

Then a clanking sound draws her attention back to the suit of armor on the buttress. It is turning its halberd to point downward, towards a courtyard and a pair of double doors below.

Still muted, Amalie raises a cheeky brow.

“Surely you know this is a trap,” Sirris says, lowering her hand.

Amalie grins. “I hope so. I want to see what this humanity can do.”

They follow the armor’s guidance down from the rooftops, along suspiciously empty walkways lined by statues of knights holding their heads in their hands. Sprites have coalesced atop the knights’ necks, granting them shadowy new heads. These, too, follow Sirris and Amalie as they walk. The black smoke of humanity continues to thicken. It rises from the stones and trails at their heels, growing denser all the time like rivulets of water converging into a flood.

At last they reach a set of double doors all but buried in humanity. Sirris can hardly make out the statuettes of knights and priests set into the wood beneath the swarming sprites. Her hands go rigid at her sides. The idea of plunging them into that black mass brings cold sweat to her brow.

Amalie holds no such reservations. She presses her palms to the doors, her hands sinking up to the wrists in humanity, and pushes them open.

Sirris has never seen the room that lies beyond, for Dunstan did not summon her to his fight with Lothric and Lorian. Even had she seen it, she would not recognize it now. If Lothric Castle is a spring, this is its source. A slow whirlpool of humanity has overtaken the vaulted ceiling, spiderwebbing out along the stone ribs and down the pillars. It traces the high windows’ ironwork, black edged with flickering white. It hangs from all four corners of the room as living banners. It is still calm, but here as nowhere else in the castle it hums with potential energy.

Only the great bed on the dais at the far end of the room remains untouched. No humanity wraps its elaborate wooden posts or pools on its sheets. On that bed sits a figure, legs folded to one side in a posture Sirris knows from the painting in Gwyndolin’s parlor.

Amalie grips Sirris’s wrist. “Ma’am.”

“Hush,” Sirris commands through her stuttering breaths. She is so close to making her captain happy. She cannot ruin it now. “Be wary.”

For the figure on the bed is not alone: two more people stand in front of the dais. The gilded swords of Lothric knights hang at their hips. They are clad in rippling black armor that conforms to their bodies like a second skin. Sirris cannot tell what it is made of at this distance, but she has a terrible suspicion it may be Dark itself.

“So, Gwyndolin of Irithyll sent you, did he?” says one of the pair, a woman with a thick red braid draped over one shoulder. “You want to see Mother Gwynevere, do you?”

“Darkmoons,” says the second figure - the woman’s brother judging by his mop of red curls. “We’ve never seen your kind here. How did you find us?”

“Greirat brought word about this place,” Amalie says, undeterred as always.

“You know Greirat?” says the man. The suspicion in his voice recedes a little. “Bernice, if they know Greirat, maybe we should let them speak -”

“You know what we swore, Roland. Besides, Darkmoons are illusionists - they lie.”

The figure on the bed sits up straighter. Bernice glances uneasily over her shoulder but takes no further heed than that.

“If you really came from Irithyll,” she goes on, “that means you’re casters. What say we have a casters' duel? Let your magic prove you worthy of seeing Mother Gwynevere.”

Roland yields with a soft sigh. His sister appears to be the more aggressive of the two. “I suppose so. We fight to the floor, then.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Sirris would not spare a drop of fear for Bernice and Roland. From what she has seen thus far, they are not knights. They are vagabonds with dubious training and little discipline who have apparently appointed themselves Gwynevere’s guards. Their swords are likely stolen.

But these are not ordinary circumstances. This room is the heart of a wellspring of humanity, its power yet to be revealed. And neither of the siblings is carrying a catalyst. This frightens Sirris more than anything.

Meanwhile, Amalie is dancing on the tips of her toes, a whitebark catalyst in one hand and a sunless talisman in the other. “You’re like Ornstein and Smough! Sirris, we’re going to fight to see Lady Gwynevere like Dunstan!”

A chill runs through Sirris from head to foot. Oh, gods.

Bernice looks at her brother. “Ornstein and Smough? Right. Why not start there?”

She lifts her hand, and the humanity answers.

Chapter Text

Like water running downhill, the black smoke of humanity streams towards Gwynevere’s defenders. Bernice and Roland spread their arms, eyes closed in rapture, and the darkness cocoons them and lifts them off the ground. In midair the smoke changes. It expands here and tightens there, bits of it melting away as if sheared off by a sculptor. Lines smooth and sharpen. Shapes emerge: the snout of a snarling lion helm, the curved edge of a greathammer. When the smoke sets the two siblings back on their feet, they are no longer themselves. They are taller, stronger, armed and armored in darkness, and they wear the silhouettes of legends. Were they golden instead of shadowy, they might be indistinguishable from the originals.

Roland stomps Smough’s foot, and the floor shakes.

“Golems?” Amalie says breathlessly.

Sirris watches Bernice bend Ornstein’s knees, crouched to charge. “No. These constructs are not empty. The brother and sister are inside. You saw.”

“Then they can become whatever they want if they’ve the imagination and the will. Oh…Sirris!” Amalie’s eyes are sparkling. “Wait until we tell the captain about this!”

“You have just determined our opponents can take whatever form they wish, and this excites you?”

“If they can do it, so can we!”

Sirris has no chance to learn whether Amalie can, in fact, do it. At that moment Bernice charges at her, slender cross-spear extended, flying across the room with Ornstein’s feet barely skimming the ground. Sirris flings herself to one side and rolls back to her feet. From the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of Roland stomping across the room with Smough’s hammer held in front of him like a battering ram. Amalie cups her hand to her mouth and blows a stream of blackflame into Roland’s path. 

Sirris does not see what happens next. No sooner is she upright than Bernice bends to charge again. This time Sirris is ready. She crouches down, her casting hand taut at her side, and forces herself to be still. 

Bernice rushes towards her. The humanity ripples around her like dark flame, and the edges of Ornstein’s construct flicker white. The tip of the cross-spear glints like a tooth. Still Sirris does not move. She fingers her silky talisman and prays, My lord. Place your miracles in my hands once more.

Then Bernice is upon her, arms drawn back for a thrust. Sirris uncoils. She slams her casting hand into the floor, palm open. A brilliant white shock wave erupts from the point of impact and catches Bernice mid-charge. She goes sprawling onto her back. Instead of clattering like true armor, the substance of Ornstein’s construct only sighs softly as it tumbles across the floor. Then Ornstein dissolves from around Bernice. The humanity smokes up towards the ceiling or sinks into cracks in the stones, leaving only the young woman behind.

Elsewhere, Amalie has grabbed hold of Smough’s hammer. She and Roland are wrestling for it, tugging each other back and forth. It is clear from their struggle that Smough’s construct lacks Smough’s legendary strength. It is only as strong as Roland.

Sirris allows herself to breathe again. Either this humanity magic is not as frightening as it appears, or its casters, despite all their raw power, are inexperienced.

Still spread-eagle on the floor, Bernice chuckles dryly. “You distracted me.”

Sirris rises warily from her crouch. “I do not imagine humanity can be held to any complex form without great concentration.”

“Difficult to concentrate with you flinging me around.” 

Bernice tilts her head to look at Amalie and Roland. Amalie has both hands on the hammer’s shaft, and Roland has lifted her off the ground, though from the way Smough’s construct is flickering he cannot hold her much longer. All at once, Amalie swings herself towards Roland. A shock wave explodes where her feet strike Smough’s rotund armor. The humanity scatters from around Roland, and he topples over. 

Sirris cannot help but smile. Amalie must have been paying attention to how Sirris knocked down Bernice.

Now Amalie opens her hands to the drifting smoke. It gathers around her, drawn like iron to a lodestone, and sweeps her off her feet. She disappears beneath thousands of tiny black sprites. Sirris’s chest tightens to watch. If it were her wrapped in all that darkness, she would be clawing for breath.

“She’s not bad, your girl,” Bernice remarks.

“She is not my -”

“Oh, that’s right, Darkmoons are too high and holy for love.”

The rule-keeper in Sirris wants to argue that Darkmoon Knights have not taken vows of celibacy since before Irithyll’s founding, long before Sirris’s service, but she forces herself not to rise to this obvious bait. It’s no worse than the teasing she’s endured from Amalie.

“And what do you know of us?” she retorts. 

“I know your captain taught you well,” Bernice says. “Your girl’s catching on fast. Look how ambitious she is already.”

Sirris looks back at Amalie. The humanity has released her - or rather, it has coalesced at her back in the form of huge draconic wings. Outspread, they are twice as long as she is tall and tipped with gleaming claws. If she intended to construct a full dragon, she did not quite succeed: her body remains her own. Even so, her winged form makes for a formidable sight.

She is working magic she has never seen before today, Sirris thinks, unable to suppress her awe. She has no scrolls from which to study and no teacher to instruct her. She is doing this on sight.

Amalie’s wings lift her off the ground. As she rises, an arc of pale blue soul orbs manifest above her head. 

Roland leaps to meet her. The humanity transforms him in midair, faster than conscious thought. All at once he is Gwyn, broad-shouldered and bearded and hurling a shadowy lightning bolt. Amalie’s soulmasses streak forward and splinter it. The sprites of which it was made disperse with a sighing sound like the wings of many moths.

Bernice is propped on her elbows now, watching her brother duel. “Force isn’t going to stop you, is it?” she murmurs. 

Sirris does not like the look on her face. It’s the same look Amalie gets when she’s plotting.

The fight soon reclaims Sirris’s attention. Roland has lifted his hand and the sprites have come rushing back to him. He is Gwyn once more, greatsword in both hands. In response Amalie’s wings wrap her in a new silhouette: Dunstan’s, right down to his claymore and scruffy hair. 

Roland sinks Gwyn’s greatsword into the floor and sends out a surge of dark flame. Amalie sidesteps it nimbly, igniting Dunstan’s claymore with blackflame as she goes. She takes a wide swing, and her wave of fire meets Roland’s with a hiss. Roland’s flame, made of humanity as it is, dissolves on contact. Amalie’s true blackflame goes on crackling across the floor. Roland has no choice but to roll aside, and he loses hold of Gwyn’s silhouette in the process.

“Are you proud, ma’am?” Amalie calls to Sirris. She is still wearing Dunstan’s form, but she hasn’t managed to mimic his voice. She sounds like herself, bright and pert. 

Sirris almost laughs. “I do not think Dunstan would be glad to hear your voice from his mouth!”

“What of my voice and my mouth?” asks Gwyndolin.

Sirris whips around. Bernice is on her feet, and she is Gwyndolin of old: sun-crowned, robed and mantled in silk. Her hands are folded neatly over a catalyst, and her head is tilted a little to one side, as Gwyndolin used to do when he questioned his knights.

“Wilt thou truly turn thy blade upon thy lord, O disciple of the Dark Sun?” Bernice asks. Her imitation of Gwyndolin’s voice is so true to life it stops Sirris cold. 

“You are not my lord,” Sirris manages to say through erratic breaths. “My lord is no longer the Dark Sun.”

Bernice bows Gwyndolin’s head. “Prithee abide with me a while, dear Sirris. I am so very lonely.”

Shock mingles with shame and anger. Those were not Gwyndolin’s words - they were the words Sirris put into his mouth in the privacy of her mind.

“You trespass upon desires I can scarcely confess even to myself!” she cries, voice fraying, cheeks burning.

“Nay, child, ‘tis not I who gazeth upon thine innermost thoughts. ‘Tis the humanity that maketh a mirror of thine heart.”

Sirris remembers the real Gwyndolin telling his knights something like that: Dark in all its forms is highly receptive to - and reflective of - memory and emotion. That was what caused the Aldrich Plague. 

I must be calm, Sirris thinks. I must guard my heart. I must not provide the humanity any kindling -

She is far too late. She has already opened the floodgates, and Bernice’s borrowed image is changing. The humanity seethes around her, swelling into a huge canine beast with the snout of an alligator and slavering fangs for ribs.

Sirris’s thoughts begin to unravel. Sulyvahn’s beasts. One on the bridge, two in the water reservoir, but long before they took up those stations they walked the ramparts and slept in the houses as people of Irithyll, and when the beasts fell they clasped their paws to beg a swift death because they still remembered when those paws were hands, they remembered who they were before and they knew what Sulyvahn had made them -

“Oh,” says Bernice’s voice from the creature’s mouth. “You have ghosts.”

Somewhere beyond Sirris, Amalie and Roland have both become Abyss Watchers. They are dancing, dragging their swords across the floor at each other and leaving trails of flame behind them. Sirris hardly sees them. She knows only that she is frozen, just like she was when she faced Sulyvahn’s creatures.

Bernice shifts again. Her bestial shape narrows into a towering human figure, feminine in the hips and shoulders. She is armored from head to foot and carrying a stake topped with pieces of wood crudely nailed into a star.

Sirris’s knees go weak. Her breathing quickens and then speeds out of control. Which of her comrades was this? Which of her fellows did Sulyvahn take and send back as a burning-stake witch, wearing armor ever so similar to that of the Darkmoon Knights? Sulyvahn made sure there would be no mistaking what he had done to Gwyndolin’s most loyal servants. He wanted everyone to know.

Sirris could not keep her comrades from disappearing and coming back as something other than themselves. She did not even have the courage to give them a warrior’s death. All she could do was run.

He lips are trembling as if with cold, and her knees are trembling, and she cannot stop no matter how tight she squeezes the talisman in her left hand. Her estoc is a useless weight in her right. She is useless. She wants to run.

It is happening again. 

Bernice changes, faster and faster. She is a jailer from the dungeons, lantern raised and branding iron glowing. She is Aldrich, and his upper half is Gwyndolin’s emaciated body. She is Yorshka, alone in her tower with a severed finger in her lap, wondering where her brother is. She is Sulyvahn himself, silent, merciless, holding a greatsword in each hand as if they weigh no more to him than daggers.

Sirris plunges deep into her own mind, desperate for rage, hate, anything that will help her fight. She finds only despair.

I ran. I lived because they died.

Her estoc falls from her hand. She falls with it.

Far away, she hears shouting.

“Bernice, that’s enough! Stop it!”

“It’s not real, ma’am, it’s not real! Don’t you think on it for one minute!”

But it is real. All these ghosts are real, and Sirris deserves to be haunted.

The tip of a sword slides under Sirris’s chin. It feels like cold air. It isn’t one of Sulyvahn’s greatswords; it’s slender with rippled edges.

“You’ll be mad soon enough,” says Bernice in Hodrick’s voice. 

Sirris looks up at her grandfather. Even as a silhouette with no facial features, he radiates condescension and latent violence. Sirris is glad there are no eyes beneath that pointed helm. Hodrick’s eyes were so wrong by the end, cold and piercing where they should have been kindly.

“I went mad and ran away, like you,” Sirris says. “I was afraid. I returned too late.”

Bernice laughs Hodrick’s nasty little laugh, the one that does not belong to the grandfather who raised Sirris and watched with pride as she learned to fight. 

“Come join your family, dear little Sirris.”

She wants to say, You are not my family, but that would be a lie. No matter how she tries to deny it, she and Hodrick the Mound-maker are cut from the same cloth. She never piled up any vertebrae to keep from going hollow, but she left other people to die so she could live. In the end that amounts to the same thing. She has no right to go around in Darkmoon armor and pretend she is of any use to Gwyndolin.

Sirris lifts her hand to take Hodrick’s. She is as good as forfeiting the duel, but that’s only right. She has disgraced herself. Bernice undid her so quickly.

Then there is a scream of fury, and Amalie’s small body slams into Bernice. Hodrick’s silhouette evaporates, and nothing remains but two young women rolling and grappling on the floor. Sirris watches as if from a great distance as they pull each other’s hair. She should tug them apart and reprimand Amalie for behaving like a wild animal, but she is so empty she cannot find the words. Her hands lie open in her lap. Her sunless talisman mocks her with its spotlessness.

Eventually she becomes aware that Roland is standing beside her. “Should we stop them?” he asks, wide-eyed. Clearly this battle has devolved well beyond his comprehension. 

Sirris says nothing. Roland, in turn, looks as if he’d rather traverse the Farron swamp than come between his sister and a fight.

Bernice is strong, but Amalie is fiercer. In the end Amalie pins the other woman beneath her. She lifts her catalyst with one hand and blue light crawls up the shaft, brightening every second.

She is fighting for you, says a small voice in Sirris’s mind. She does not think you unworthy.

“You should have thought about this,” Amalie pants, “before you hurt my senior.”

“Children, enough!”

All four of them freeze. The woman on the bed at the far end of the hall has risen. Sirris cannot make out her face at this distance, but she can only be Gwynevere: her graceful curves and stately height mirror the painting in Gwyndolin’s sitting room. Her voice is commanding and soft all at once, more disappointed than angry. In an instant it turns everyone in the room into disobedient guilt-ridden children.

Bernice gets to her feet, pushing loose strands of her braid behind her ears. “We swore to protect you, Mother. We were only doing our duty.”

“I sanctioned thee to protect me. I did not sanction cruelty,” Gwynevere says.

“I didn’t mean to be cruel.” Bernice glances uneasily at Sirris. “I didn’t know she had memories like that.”

Sirris shivers hard. Her mind is still full of Sulyvahn’s creatures and Hodrick’s voice. Amalie moves behind her and tucks her arms across Sirris’s chest. “It’s all right,” she murmurs. Sirris lets her.

“You should have stopped as soon as you realized,” Roland mutters. “Bloody hell, we’re not torturers.”

“Certainly not,” Gwynevere says. “Bernice, thou art an overeager, vindictive child yet to master thyself.”

Bernice bows her head. “I don’t deny it. The humanity ran away with me. I should have known better.”

“Ask forgiveness not of me, but of she whom thou hast wronged.”

Bernice hesitates only a moment before turning to Sirris. “We love our mother like you love your captain,” she says. All her calculated aggression is gone now, and she looks younger in its absence. “Lots of us in Lothric Castle don’t have mothers by blood anymore. We never knew kindness until we came here and met Mother Gwynevere. She looks after us, and we keep her safe. Still…I went too far. That’s my fault, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.”

It’s difficult to tell through the fog of misery, but Sirris thinks Bernice is speaking in earnest. Amalie seems to think so too: there is no tension in the arms across Sirris’s chest. 

“I would have done the same in your place,” Sirris says, her voice distant to her own ears. She has no desire to offer absolution, but she does understand Bernice’s perspective. Sirris spent her own young adulthood cutting the ears off the guilty in Gwyndolin’s name, and she was honored to do it.

“Call it a draw?” Bernice asks.

“I annul this duel,” Gwynevere says, lifting one hand. “Let it be as naught.”

She steps down from the bed on wooden stairs that creak softly beneath her feet. She is tall and statuesque, but far from the illusory giantess Dunstan met in Anor Londo. She moves with the light tread of a woman accustomed to gliding across ballroom floors. When she nears the center of the hall, she pulls back her hood and reveals a face subtly different from the painting whose every detail Sirris has memorized. Gwynevere’s true face is at once less alluring and more beautiful than that painting. It’s a simple, sweet sort of beauty that radiates warmth. Sirris wants to melt into her arms.

“My brother sent you, say ye?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am,” Amalie says, a little breathy.

“‘My lady’,” Sirris corrects.

“Be ye his Blades of the Darkmoon?”

“Yes, my lady,” Amalie says.

“And he…is well?”

“Better than ever.”

Gwynevere sinks to the floor in a whisper of robes, one hand pressed to her mouth. “Oh, my sweet Lin…”

Amalie takes a step forward. “Are you all right?”

“Aye, ‘tis only…” Gwynevere looks up, and her warm brown eyes are full of tears. “I thought him dead.”

~~~

Dunstan is worried about Gwyndolin.

Even before Yorshka disappeared, the god was chilled, limping badly on his twisted ankle, and in obvious pain. His legs are not fit for so much walking. He almost fell apart when he found Yorshka’s bed of straw empty. His hands kept twitching, as if trying to sketch out a spell to bring his sister back to him. He would have worn a trench in the corvian settler’s floor had Dunstan not arrested his stilted pacing.

“If any harm had come to her, you would know,” Dunstan said. “You would have felt it.”

Gwyndolin put his hand on Dunstan’s chest and breathed shakily for a moment. “We cannot be certain of that.”

“Yes, we can.”

“But -”

“We can.”

They did not need to discuss where Yorshka might be. They both understood that she must have gone after Friede or the flame, and the two are unlikely to be far apart. 

Thus they found themselves in the woods again, Gwyndolin stumbling and shivering, Dunstan holding him upright when he can. They knew they were going the right way because the forest was very still save for clumps of snow dropping off the boughs. Someone - the greatwolf? - had cleared their path.

Now they stand at the doorway of a catacomb built into the hillside. Dunstan hopes it is beneath Friede’s church. The god trembling on his arm cannot go much further. 

The upper floor is foul enough, fetid with patches of maggoty rot and scattered corpses. The lower floor is a nightmare. Dunstan hears the buzzing before he’s halfway down the steps, and he tells Gwyndolin to wait while he surveys the place. The smell comes next, an overwhelming iron reek laden with decay. 

Beyond the entryway is a long, low room wallowing ankle deep in blood and rot. Bodies are piled up against the columns like refuse. The air is almost too thick with iron to breathe, and it thrums with echoes: awful sucking noises and many beating wings. The silhouettes of mosquitoes hover through the murk. Their bodies are so swollen from their feasting their wings can hardly lift them.

Dunstan groans. “Don’t go in there, Lin. It’s filthy. You’re going to get sick.”

But Gwyndolin has already limped to the entrance. He takes one breath and gags. He almost loses his balance in his rush to pull his cloak over his nose. 

Dunstan offers an arm to steady him. “I mean it. Don’t go in there.”

“This is Aldrich’s stench.” Gwyndolin’s voice is muffled by fabric, but the hatred in it rings clear. Nothing Dunstan can say will stop him now.

“All right,” Dunstan concedes reluctantly. “I suppose we should tell the flies they’ve had enough.”

We’re close, he tells himself. Experience has taught him that hellish places like this often lie near the heart of things. Nonetheless, he is very glad Yorshka is not here to see this.

The mosquitoes fall quickly. This is a blessing, because the room is filled with them. They crouch over every patch of rot and mound of corpses, lapping at the blood like it will make them immortal. They are so fixated on their meals that they often do not notice their attackers until it’s too late. Dunstan carves through them with Vilhelm’s greatsword while Gwyndolin, propped against a column, picks them off with his bow. The god’s arms are so taut with hatred Dunstan can see them shaking. Dunstan takes it as a dire sign of Gwyndolin’s exhaustion that he is not using magic.

In short order the two of them cut down enough flies to feel more or less safe while they search for a passage up to Friede’s church. Now that the horrible buzzing and sucking noises have dwindled, Dunstan hears a new sound: breathing. The wet breaths of someone wounded. 

Looking around, he traces the sound to a black-clad figure lying at the base of a column. Dunstan would have taken it for another corpse if not for that quiet sign of life. Now that he looks more closely, he recognizes the black mantle edged with gold. His forehead twinges in remembered pain.

“Lin,” he says softly, drawing the god to his side. “Look.”

Gwyndolin follows Dunstan’s gaze to the bed of filth piled against the column: fungus and decaying remains and gods know what else. He folds his arms tight. “Is that…”

Dunstan nods grimly.

“But Sir Vilhelm fell to thy sword. I saw him die.”

“He’s not dead anymore. Maybe nothing can stay dead here. It just keeps rotting.”

Gwyndolin’s face is flat, so too his voice. “The flies will drain him dry.”

“Probably.”

There is a long pause, filled with distant buzzing. Dunstan imagines the bloated mosquitoes in this pit swarming him, stabbing their mouthparts into him over and over, and almost retches.

I gave him a quick, clean death. That’s my way. To see his closely held principle thwarted in such a hideous manner angers Dunstan, never mind how vile Vilhelm was. 

“You don’t want to kill the rest of the flies, do you?” he asks. He tries to make the question sound untroubled. He does not succeed.

Gwyndolin shrugs delicately. “Perhaps we ought to.”

“Lin, it’s because of him and Friede that Ariandel is suffering. He sealed your magic.”

“I know it. I also know what it is to be eaten.”

Dunstan doesn’t have a counterargument for that.

“If it were us lying there,” he says anyway, “he wouldn’t lift a finger to spare us any pain. He’d stand there and smirk while we bled.”

“Assuredly so. But are we not more decent than he?”

Dunstan shifts from foot to foot. His conscience always chooses the most unfortunate moments to prick him.  

“We’re not going to save him,” he says.

“Nay, I should say not.”

“We’re just going to kill the flies.”

“And when we find the flame…”

“…he’ll die properly.” Dunstan sighs. “Stay here. I want a word with him.”

He looks around to ensure all the remaining mosquitoes are feasting at a safe distance, then approaches the column where Vilhelm lies. His boots squelch in the fungus and blood on the floor.

He crouches down before the fallen knight. Vilhelm’s face is hidden behind his black helmet, but his head tilts up an inch in recognition of his visitor. He presses one hand to the four bleeding slashes across his throat, where Dunstan raked him with crow talons, so he can choke out a few words:

“Nothing dies. Nothing is permitted to die.”

This is not at all what Dunstan expected to hear. Was that fear? Vilhelm’s voice is so garbled with blood and pain it’s difficult to make out his tone.

“And do you still think we should let Ariandel alone?” Dunstan asks. His own tone surprises him. It’s not as mocking as it might be.

Vilhelm makes a wet wheezing noise that might have been a laugh were his throat not laid open. Again Dunstan wonders what Vilhelm means to convey: derision, or bitterness at the full realization of what his lady has wrought. He was content to let Ariandel rot until the rot took him.

Whatever it is, Dunstan has little patience for it. “Listen, we’re going to get rid of the rest of the flies. If you’re lucky, they won’t come back before we find Ariandel’s flame, and you won’t be eaten. That’s more mercy than you deserve. When this place burns, you can burn with it.”

Vilhelm says nothing to this. He turns his head aside, subsiding a little into his pile of death. 

“Are we close to the flame?” Dunstan asks. “I’d wager we are. Things always seem to get worse right before the end, and this pit is the worst we’ve seen yet.”

Again Vilhelm returns only silence. Spiteful silence, Dunstan thinks.

He scoffs and straightens up. He knows well enough when he’s wasting his time.

He has just turned to walk away when Vilhelm’s broken voice gurgles, “You are close.”

Dunstan stops. “Is the flame in this building?”

This time he receives no answer. Apparently those few words are all Vilhelm is willing to give. They are revealing enough on their own, however. The Vilhelm who taunted Dunstan in the library would never have offered up even that small piece of information. Dunstan finds this change unsettling. He strives never to forget that his enemies are as human as he is, but that knowledge always disturbs him.

“You’ll be free soon,” he says quietly.

He finds Gwyndolin watching him a few paces away, his face still inscrutable.

“Hath he any remorse at all?” the god asks.

“Hard to say. If he does, it’s only because he’s paying the price the corvians in the settlement have been paying all along.” 

“I too upheld a ruinous order until the ruin came home to me,” Gwyndolin says with false lightness. “I kept the firelinking until a Lord of Cinder nigh consumed me. Am I so different from Sir Vilhelm?”

Dunstan’s mind shrinks from the logic in this. He does not want to compare his closest friend, the man he took to the kiln, with Friede’s cold-blooded executioner.

“Maybe not at first,” he says, “but you’ve got a heart, Lin. You came ‘round right. You took Dark and built something beautiful with it. No one else in your family ever had the nerve to do that.”

“We do as we believe we must. No more.”

Dunstan can feel Gwyndolin sinking back into a morbid mood - small wonder, given the charnel house they’ve landed in - and he is not sure how to pull him out.

“None of that,” he says. “We’re almost done here. We’ll find Yorshka and the flame, and then you can go home and have a bath and some warm food and you’ll feel better. You’ll never have to think about this place again. Don’t go hollow now.”

Dunstan knows, of course, that it won’t be so simple. Even if they can convince Friede to burn the painting without a struggle, neither of them will ever forget the things they’ve seen here, nor will Yorshka. Her grief will haunt Dunstan’s dreams as much as the corvians’ dying croaks. It’s all so terribly similar to the final days of Fire. He knows Gwyndolin feels that weight too.

Gods, he wants Elisabeth. He wants her arms around him. He wants to put his sword aside and be sheltered for a little while. Although he will never frighten his wife with an account of what he has witnessed in Ariandel, he knows she will understand just by looking at him. That will be enough.

Dunstan wishes he had Elisabeth’s wisdom. She would know how to change Friede’s mind and avoid further bloodshed. As it is, he’ll soon have to find his way up to Friede’s church and kill yet another person who doesn’t want to die.

A shiver runs up from his toes through his body. He lets it pass over him, but he does not surrender himself to it. He cannot yet afford that luxury. Gwyndolin and Yorshka still need him.

You were strong enough to take the First Flame in your hands and tell it goodnight, he thinks. Share that strength with me, Lisbet.

Having come as close as he possibly can to prayer, Dunstan unsheathes Vilhelm’s sword. Blackflame rushes up the blade as it slides free.

“Do you have any fight left in you?” he asks.

Part of him wants the god to say no. Gwyndolin looks a mess. The cuts the corvian knight left on his neck have reddened. He is leaning hard on his uninjured foot, and he has not stopped trembling since he found Yorshka gone. He needs a warm, dry place to rest, not a pool of old blood soaking into the hem of his cloak. At the very least, he needs to preserve his limited energy for the conflict with Friede. Unkindled do not die easily.

But Gwyndolin, as always, is as stubborn as his father. Without a word he kneels down on the stump of a broken column and readies his bow again.

Dunstan knows better than to argue. At least he has the good sense to save his magic.

He slogs to the nearest cluster of mosquitoes and takes a wide, two-handed swing. Three of the insects fall, writhing and shriveling, before they can stir themselves from their meal. Dunstan turns aside so the blood in their bloated abdomens does not spatter his face.

In the time it takes Dunstan to do this, Gwyndolin has already brought down six flies of his own.

~~~

Yorshka is asleep in Friede’s chair.

Friede sits on the floor beside her, turning over Yorshka’s words like stones in surf. The girl sees a future in which Friede finds the strength to do what frightens her most - and not only sees it, but believes in it! Yorshka harbors the sincere hope that Friede will allow Ariandel to burn and help to make the new painted world a proper home for the lost. Friede would laugh at such innocence, did it not disturb her so. She has never known anyone so utterly without guile. She does not know what to make of it.

Cruelty was the first lesson Friede learned as an Unkindled. The gods were cruel, the flame was cruel, the world was cruel. To survive, and more importantly to overthrow the Old Lord’s dying order, she had to be cruel in return. If she wished for justification, she had only to invoke Kaathe’s sacred wisdom. The age of Dark could only ever have a violent birth. Gwyn and his heirs made sure of that.

Thus, Friede and her sisters taught each other to be cold. As founders of the Sable Church, they cultivated the arts of deception and death. They did not teach other to be gentle.

Yet some part of Friede must have longed for gentleness, because when she failed to usurp the First Flame, she came to Ariandel and tried to become Priscilla. She has no illusions about that. Her scythe, her frost magic, her invisibility spells - all desperate imitation. Perhaps she hoped that if she mimicked Priscilla closely enough, she would learn some of her fabled kindness.

She never truly succeeded. Her old coldness died hard. The best she ever managed was a distant pity for the residents of Ariandel, who were all as bereft of home and purpose as she. And when it became clear that Ariandel’s time was done, she chose not to let it go. Priscilla would have let go, she is quite sure.

And now she is here with Priscilla’s daughter, watching Yorshka’s chest rise and fall, allowing the girl to lead her down paths she has not walked since before she became Unkindled. 

What if this future Yorshka sees is not impossible? What if Friede is strong enough to confront her fear of fire and destroy the only home she has left? What might she become? In that new world, she might learn gentleness at last. The girl sleeping beside her could show her the way. Yorshka could be...not her daughter; Friede has no right to that, but her sister or her friend, perhaps. The dragon of spring come to thaw her heart.

The old gods taught that fire is life. The people of the painted world have a different view. They believe that fire has a dual nature: death and rebirth, end and beginning. Each aspect depends on its opposite, and neither means anything without the other. In that light, fire is not so terrifying: an agent of transformation rather than destruction alone. If Friede could only convince herself of that, all this would be so much easier. Yuria would scorn her as a weakling, but does it matter? Yuria lost all respect for Friede long ago.

If Dark Sun Gwyndolin could turn his back on all he knew so a new world might live, then surely…

No, it cannot be. A new painting requires burning, and Friede’s flesh cannot remember burning as anything but pain.

For the first time in her life, she wishes it were otherwise.

Friede looks at the sleeping dragon girl and shivers. What strange power Yorshka has! For years Friede refused even to consider burning Ariandel, yet for a moment this girl made it seem possible, even good. She made Friede believe it might not be too late for her to do something right.

But it is too late. She can feel the little painter’s presence in the attic above her, tugging the threads of creation and making them hum with potential. Even if Friede were certain, she has no more time to change.

She permits herself to touch Yorshka’s hair for what she senses will be the last time. “Would that I could see thine Irithyll,” she says softly. “I am pleased to know there is beauty in Dark.”

As if these words are a cue in a grand tragedy, Velka’s altar begins to slide backwards into the wall. The sound of scraping stone is a blade against Friede’s throat.

Chapter Text

Yorshka wakes to the sound of footfalls. 

When she blinks away sleep, the first person she sees is Friede, sitting on the floor beside her chair. The woman’s body is doing something strange: her shoulders drawing back, her rib cage lifting. For a drowsy moment Yorshka wonders why Friede looks like a bowstring pulled taut. Then her gaze flits to a side door in the chapel wall, from which Gwyndolin and Dunstan are emerging. Both are rusty brown to their calves. The hems of their cloaks are stained and heavy with drying blood. They bear the wide, darting eyes of those who have just pried themselves from a nightmare. Gwyndolin is clutching Dunstan’s arm and his legs look ready to give out. His ankle, Yorshka remembers - he never gave her a chance to heal it! Has he been limping about in pain all the time he’s been gone? Yorshka can’t stand to imagine it.

Both Dunstan and Gwyndolin speak at once:

“Yorshka -”

“ - all right?”

“ - bade thee stay -”

“ - she hurt you?”

“Nay…?” Yorshka says, her voice still slow with sleep.

Gwyndolin releases Dunstan’s arm and staggers forward a few steps. Yorshka rises from her chair to meet him, Friede’s cloak slipping from her shoulders. She is steadier than Gwyndolin thanks to her rest, but not by much. When they meet in front of the cellar steps where Velka’s altar was - when did they appear? - they catch hold of each other’s forearms for support. 

“Thou’rt yet injured,” Yorshka says.

Gwyndolin’s eyes turn liquid. “Oh, darling girl.” 

Before Yorshka can reach for her brother’s ankle, Gwyndolin has pressed her to his chest. He smells wrong, like iron. Yorshka doesn’t mind that. His arms are still the same, and his voice too, murmuring gentle frightened things into her hair. Yorshka only discerns bits of it, muffled as it is: “disappear thus” and “half to death”. That makes Yorshka’s heart sink. She had good reason for disappearing, but she does not want Gwyndolin to be frightened, certainly not half to death. Knowing he will not hear any of her arguments, Yorshka just puts her arms around him and holds him tight. He shudders hard once, then leans into her embrace. Yorshka is pleased to feel his trembling body relax a little.

She does not see Friede looking at her with a face twisted by yearning. She does not see Dunstan watching Friede’s every small movement. She is content to rest in Gwyndolin’s arms and rejoice that he and Dunstan are safe. Now that they are all together, surely they can persuade Friede to change her course. It shouldn’t be difficult; she is already wavering on the edge. If Friede is the danger of which Priscilla warned in so many dreams and visions, Yorshka believes her intervention has averted the worst of it. There need be no fighting today.

She sees now that her mother was wise to withhold guidance when Yorshka called to her in the corvian settler’s house. She did indeed already know what to do. She only had to trust herself to do it.

Be not afraid, Mother, she thinks. Soon we will loose Ariandel’s flame and return home. Perhaps Friede will come with us, and I will help her heal. ‘Tis nearly over. 

Even as Yorshka thinks this, unease creeps into her mind. If this journey is nearly over, why does she have so many unanswered questions? What of the greatwolf and its silent allegiance? What of Priscilla’s tower, which Yorshka still feels unready to climb? What of those strange thoughts she had on the way to Friede’s church - that this world is hers now?

And if this isn’t the end of the journey, is she wrong to think Friede will change her mind?

She presses herself closer to Gwyndolin, seeking reassurance. He offers none. The tension in his body only echoes Yorshka’s fears.

Dunstan, too, sounds suspicious. “Are you hiding the flame down those stairs?” he asks.

Friede does not answer.

“Did you know Vilhelm is lying in the catacombs with his throat cut open? He can’t die properly unless the painting burns. We killed the flies that were after his blood, but they won’t be gone for long.”

Gwyndolin sighs. “Perhaps a bit more subtlety…”

Again Friede does not answer. When Yorshka looks up, the Unkindled woman is staring at Dunstan from across the newly revealed staircase. Whatever emotion is in her eyes, it is hidden in the shadows of her clerical veil.

“If Sir Vilhelm fell to thine hand, he took his due place amongst the flies,” she says at last. Her voice is flat, her face a mask. Only the tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth betrays her.

Dunstan sees it too. “You’re not as heartless as you want us to think, are you?”

Yorshka does not know what to make of this talk of flies. She does not like what it implies, even if Vilhelm was a rather nasty man. She does fervently hope, however, that Dunstan is right about Friede’s heart. Yorshka trusts his judgment and experience more than her own. If he too sees some softness in Friede, there is a chance it is real, not just a creation of Yorshka’s naïve hope.

“You must have seen what’s happening out there,” Dunstan presses. “Nothing is allowed to die. The people are suffering. Your own knight is suffering. You can end it if you let us walk down those stairs.”

“Thou wouldst have me set flame to the land I account mine home,” Friede murmurs. Her gaze falls on Gwyndolin. “As thou extinguished flame in thine own lands, if thy sister speaketh true.”

“Let us be mirrors,” Gwyndolin says, in the steady voice with which he issues instructions before every boreal storm. “Kindle thy flame as I snuffed mine. Thou shalt endure as I endured.”

“Nay. I am not so strong as thee.”

“I held the same misgivings when I stood in thy place. I tell thee, this burning will break thee and remake thee stronger.”

“A pretty platitude.”

“‘Tis not -”

“Thou’rt Unkindled as I,” Friede says, turning to Dunstan. There is a note of desperation in her low voice. “Thou knowest the pain of burning. Thou knowest what I fear.”

“I know,” Dunstan says gently. “I’ve also seen enough to know the world needs Fire as much as Dark. Not all burning is for the worse. Sometimes it makes way for new things to grow.”

Friede glances at the chapel ceiling, towards whatever she senses upstairs. She is teetering on the edge of dread and wonder.

“I understand I’m asking you to give up your home,” Dunstan adds. Yorshka hears in his words the patience and softness Elisabeth has taught him. “I know what home means to an Unkindled with nowhere to belong. But Ariandel doesn’t have to be the only home you ever know.”

“Many lost folk find succor in Irithyll. Thou couldst also,” Yorshka says, ignoring the reproachful noise Gwyndolin makes in his throat. She would not overstep her bounds this way if she did not feel she must.

Friede lets out a long breath that quivers in the middle. “Oh, child. How canst thou issue such an invitation knowing full well what I am?”

“Thou needst not always be as thou art.” 

Yorshka detaches herself from Gwyndolin’s protective arms. Now is her opportunity to do as her mother would have done. She prays no one can see her heart racing in her chest as she extends her hand to Friede. 

“Please try. Please.”

Friede looks at Yorshka’s hand for a long while. Time grows heavy, laden with import. This moment, Yorshka senses, is balanced on a precipice, and it could tip either way into salvation or ruin.

Then at last, Friede slips her hand into Yorshka’s. Her palm is rough like Dunstan’s, no doubt from wielding a weapon. Her heart is pounding beneath her skin.

Yorshka’s own pulse speeds with relief. Has she judged rightly? Can it be she hasn’t made another terrible mistake after all?

“Take courage,” she says, trying to sound grown-up and wise. “Thou’rt not alone.”

In response, Friede squeezes Yorshka’s hand hard, hard enough to hurt. Yorshka does not flinch. She knows this gesture well. Gwyndolin used to hold her hands like this, on the bad days when he hated his false sun and his empty halls and himself.

Friede leads Yorshka down the plain stone steps beneath Velka’s altar. Gwyndolin and Dunstan trail warily behind. Yorshka knows without having to look back that their hands are on their weapons. Mistrust seeps from them like fog from wet ground.

Below is another chapel, stripped almost bare of furnishings. There are no pews, no altar, no proper pillars. Candelabra stand forlornly between slender columns set into the side walls. The only light comes from a small window high on the far wall. It casts a pale blue glow over the snow on the floor and the roots crawling through the stones. The air smells of earth and cold. It is very still.

The chapel’s sole occupant sits hunched in a chair at the other end of the room. He must have giant blood: were his limbs not so emaciated, they would rival young trees. He is bent double over an ornate golden cauldron set between his feet. By the faint red light flickering within, Yorshka discerns that his face bears the same shrunken features as the corvians. Despite his isolation in this chapel, he does not appear to have escaped the rot afflicting his fellows. Part of his upper lip has disintegrated, peeling back over crooked teeth. 

Behind Yorshka, Gwyndolin and Dunstan are whispering urgently about a Lordvessel and the source of Ariandel’s flame. Yorshka does not hear much of this discussion. Her attention belongs to the ropes trailing from beneath the giant’s feathered cloak. Each one is tied around a sturdy peg driven into the floor.

Yorshka’s stomach turns. She should have expected something like this, knowing the suffering to which Friede subjected the rest of the painted world, yet still she almost drops Friede’s hand. The giant’s condition reminds her of the prisoners Dunstan, Gwyndolin, and Siegward liberated from Irithyll’s dungeons. How can the same woman who tucked her cloak around Yorshka’s shoulders be responsible for such pain?

Against all her instincts, Yorshka holds tighter to Friede’s hand. She reminds herself that Gwyndolin did quite as much harm to humanity as Friede has done to Ariandel, and for reasons not so different from hers. He changed. Now his dearest friends are humans. Yorshka must continue to believe Friede can do the same, most of all because Friede seems unable to believe it herself.

“Who is he?” Yorshka asks in a hush. She can guess the answer, and it disturbs her.

“‘Tis Father Ariandel,” Friede says, “he who governed the painted world ere I arrived to claim it as mine own.”

“A corvian settler told us you put a spell on him to convince him not to burn the painting,” Dunstan says. 

“A spell? Nay, ‘twas simple persuasion. We founders of the Sable Church learned well to wield that art, as Kaathe did before us.”

“The flame dwelleth in yon golden vessel?” Yorshka asks.

“Aye. When it groweth too eager, Ariandel will scourge himself and bleed upon it, that it may burn no more for a time.”

Scourge? Yorshka does not know what that word means, but it makes her whole body clench. 

“I don’t suppose water would serve just as well,” Dunstan mutters.

Friede goes on as if she has not heard him, as if she cannot stop now that she has begun. “He is afeared of fire as I am, yet he will do my will. Should I wish it, he will overturn the vessel and spill forth the flame. I need only ask.”

“Then ask,” Dunstan says. Metal and leather creak as he shifts from foot to foot, anticipating conflict.

Beside him, Gwyndolin is solemn. “‘Tis not so simple. Lady Friede’s truest belief is that fire is an evil. We ask her now to lay that aside.”

“Like you did at the kiln.”

“Just so.”

“This is her kiln.”

“Aye, Unkindled.”

For a time Friede makes no reply. Her composure slips. She worries at the prayer beads hanging from her waist, running them through her fingers over and over. Her pulse comes quick and erratic against Yorshka’s palm. Yorshka herself is dizzy with anxiety.

In the end it is Father Ariandel who breaks the silence. His voice is fretful, almost childlike, and unbefitting of a giant:

“Friede? I see flame flickering before me once more…” 

Still Friede does not answer. Her eyes flick between her three visitors; her mouth forms the beginnings of sentences several times. Yorshka discerns the words I cannot. Friede’s body has assumed its rigid, drawn-bowstring posture again, and this time she is holding her right hand a little away from her side, as if seeking a weapon she does not yet hold. Around her, Gwyndolin and Dunstan are tense too. Yorshka watches them all with her heart in her throat.

Let me be right. Please, Mother, let me be right.

“What stoppeth thine ears?” Father Ariandel quavers. “Friede, my flail…”

At last Friede finds herself again. Her words come stiff: “Fear not, good Father. The flame riseth only to greet this unkindled ash and these children of the gods. We have no need of thy flail.”

Yorshka tries to exhale. She should be relieved, shouldn’t she? Surely Friede has just reassured Father Ariandel that the flame is not a thing to be feared and repressed. 

So why is her breath caught in her chest?

She gives Friede’s hand a tentative squeeze. “Lady Friede? Wilt thou bid him release the flame?”

Friede lets Yorshka’s hand fall. Then, moving like a chess piece on a predetermined path, she turns to a corner near the steps and takes up a scythe leaning against the wall. It is a large weapon, its shaft almost as long as Friede is tall. Its blade is a beautiful, wicked crescent, a sharpened moon. The steel glints blue in the winter light. 

For one moment Yorshka hopes wildly that Friede means to cut herself and bleed upon the flame in Father Ariandel’s place. But even she in all her innocence knows that Friede does not need a scythe for that.

“Go upstairs now, child,” Friede says. “I will not strike at one who cannot fight.”

“Strike at…” Yorshka’s heart plummets into her stomach and her eyes fill with tears. By all the gods, she was wrong again!

Behind her, metal rasps as Dunstan and Gwyndolin ready their own weapons.

“You’d best do as she says,” Dunstan tells Yorshka. “This is too much for you, lass. Might be too much for us, if I’m honest.”

“Go,” Gwyndolin reiterates. He is staring Friede down, catalyst held at the ready before him.

Yorshka’s tears spill over. She thought she had kept everyone safe! How could she have failed so sorely? Why must she always be such a useless fool?

“Please do not fight!”

“This is no fault of thine,” Friede says. Her half-scarred face is sad and full of loathing turned inward. “Thy kindness is a gift, and I give thanks to have known it. Would that I were worthy of it. But I am not Priscilla. I am not brave.”

She caresses the blade of her scythe.

“I am not made for selfless deeds.”

Then Friede and Dunstan fly at each other. Their weapons meet in a shower of sparks and frost.

Gwyndolin drops to one knee with catalyst blazing blue. “Get thee gone!”

Yorshka whirls and flees up the cellar steps, gasping for breath between huge, wracking sobs. The last thing she sees is Father Ariandel covering his face with his withered hands.

~~~

Friede’s first dashing blow sends Dunstan staggering backwards. That strike, its swiftness and fluidity, tells him a great deal about his opponent. First, there is more strength in her slender body than meets the eye, which Dunstan should have guessed from the size of her weapon. Second, she fights like a dancer, skimming across the floor with her bare feet scarcely touching the stones. Last, she is aggressive. None of these observations put Dunstan at ease. He does not know whether his claymore or Vilhelm’s greatsword can keep up with Friede’s movements.

There is one factor in his favor, however: Friede is unarmored. There’s nothing but a cloth dress between her and Dunstan’s blades. He only has to land one solid blow to her abdomen. Even an Unkindled won’t survive long with her organs strewn across the ground.

And then, of course, there is Gwyndolin.

Even immobilized by his injured ankle, the god is a force to be reckoned with. He has entered a state of calm, cold fury Dunstan has only seen once before: just before Gwyndolin entered his cathedral to fight Sulyvahn. Yorshka’s grief has made him deadly. As Dunstan scrambles to recover his balance, Gwyndolin sends a stream of purple stars towards Friede. Rather than pressing her advantage, Friede has to swerve away from them, scythe tucked behind her back.

Dunstan circles her with his palms braced against the flat of his claymore, ready to block. “Yorshka gave you every chance to make things right,” he calls out, “and you turned your back.”

Friede leaps at him. Her scythe carves a frosty crescent in the air. Dunstan plants his feet and prepares to feel Friede’s full weight slam into him. It never comes. A glowing blue arrow catches the Unkindled woman in midair and tips her out of her jump. She lands with a soft thump, never once losing her grace. Her hand strays briefly to her chest; beyond this, she gives no sign that she felt Gwyndolin’s attack.

Friede lunges at Dunstan, and he meets her head-on. As she nears him she twists her momentum into a spinning slash that he only just manages to check with his blade. The blow rings through his arms and almost pitches him off his feet. Hands buzzing numb, the thrust he aims at Friede’s stomach veers wide and passes under her left arm instead. The tip of his claymore nicks soft flesh. Red wells through the upper part of Friede’s gray sleeve. Again she hardly seems to notice. She pauses not a second before swinging wide and low at Dunstan. Once again he has to scrabble backwards, sliding on the dusting of snow. 

Gwyndolin has more success. His next volley of purple stars soars cold over Dunstan’s head and takes Friede full in the chest. This time she does reel back, breath shuddering out of her.

“The girl cannot understand us,” she pants. “However kind she may be, she abandoned this land and gave her heart to Fire.”

Dunstan bristles on Yorshka’s behalf. “She was the first person in Irithyll to look for beauty in Dark. She must have told you that. Maybe you weren’t listening.”

“Were she truly faithful to Dark, she would not bid me burn the painted world.”

“That’s rubbish and you know it. The painted world is rotting. It needs to burn.”

Friede swings at Dunstan again, high this time, forcing him to twist awkwardly to one side. Toying with him. 

“No fire shall touch this land while I draw breath,” Friede says. “There is no fate worse than burning.”

“The gods thought there was no fate worse than Dark. Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re acting like Gwyn!”

Dunstan spits the old lord’s name like a curse. It works too well: Friede inhales sharply, eyes flashing beneath her veil, and disappears. Panicked, Dunstan spins around. He scans the room for signs of his opponent, expecting to feel a blade in his back at any moment. If Friede has blinked away like Gwyndolin does, Dunstan will not be able to tell where she will reappear.

“The snow will betray her,” Gwyndolin says. He too is swiveling his gaze all around the room.

“She didn’t blink?”

“Nay. She is but cloaked.”

Dunstan has no time to be grateful for Gwyndolin’s keen magical sensibilities. From the corner of his right eye, he catches sight of snow puffing up from the floor. Not a second too soon. Friede reappears and swings her scythe in a vicious upward arc meant to sweep him off his feet. The blade passes so close to Dunstan’s chest the chill cuts through his sturdy Drang tunic. He propels himself backwards, loses his footing and falls. For a moment he can only lie there, shivering. Once again Gwyndolin saves him. A brilliant blue-green comet shard drives into Friede’s side and knocks her to her knees.

When she regains her feet, she turns on Gwyndolin. She holds her scythe behind her, the blade aligned with the curve of her hem, deceptively placid. 

“The tales are true,” she muses. “Thou’rt unlike thy sire in every way, yet quite as fearsome. ‘Twill please me to snuff thy flame for good.”

Will it? Dunstan thinks. You’re standing here making taunts when you could be cutting Lin in half. Friede reminds him of a cat batting an object around a tabletop because instinct tells her so, not because she really wants to see it fall off the edge and shatter on the floor. When Gwyndolin blinks out of existence, she doesn’t even look around for him, just chuckles dryly as if to say, So we two can play the same game.

“You can still stop this. It ain’t too late,” Dunstan tells her. “If you don’t want -”

Friede vanishes again. At the same time, Gwyndolin reappears on the opposite side of the chapel and launches a barrage of stars from his catalyst. They fly into empty space.

This time Dunstan is ready for the incoming attack. He pivots on the spot and locks his gaze onto the puffs of snow that mark Friede’s footsteps. They make a cautious circle around him, then suddenly quicken and rush at him from the left. Dunstan tucks himself into a roll at the sound of Friede’s indrawn breath. Her scythe passes over his head and a tuft of shaggy hair parts company with his scalp. 

When Dunstan comes up, he is facing Friede’s back, and she is still committed to the inertia of her swing. Now Dunstan is the one compelled by instinct. He grabs the Unkindled by one small shoulder and drives his claymore through her body.

Friede makes a wet, choked noise. Her body presses against Dunstan’s, leaning on him the way Elisabeth does but all wrong. The warmth spreading from her to Dunstan is wet. This, he thinks, is the most terrible sort of intimacy.

Friede sags forward. Dunstan lets her go. She slides off his blade and thumps facedown onto the snowy pavers. Blood pools and widens around her.

Looking down at Friede and her scarlet life ebbing away, Dunstan feels ill. She looks so much smaller now, a breakable person like anyone else. Dunstan thinks of the day Yorshka broke the pitcher Sulyvahn used to poison Gwyndolin. She cut up both her arms on the glass. They found her lying on the floor of Gwyndolin’s bedchamber wearing white silk and red blood. She looked very small then too.

By now Gwyndolin has limped warily over to Dunstan. The god averts his eyes from Friede’s body.

I’m sorry, lass, Dunstan thinks, glancing at the stairs up which Yorshka fled. 

As he asks Yorshka’s forgiveness, a tug in his mind warns him that this battle was too simple. Friede wasn’t trying hard enough. There’s something uncanny, too, about the way her blood is running towards Father Ariandel’s chair, as if drawn by the embers. Dunstan tries to replace this idea with a builder’s explanation - the chapel floor may be sloped, for instance - but it refuses to be dismissed.

Gwyndolin says, “Is she…?”

Dunstan nods. “She will be soon.”

Behind them, Father Ariandel begins to whimper. It’s a low, moaning sound, the sound of a dam about to burst. The giant is rocking, twitching, rotting lips pulling back even further from his mouth. 

Gwyndolin casts Dunstan a disturbed glance, and Dunstan resets his grip on his claymore. He does not like the looks of this one bit.

Then Father Ariandel throws back his head and screams. It is not a human sound. It is a force, a rending. Trees tearing from their roots, an avalanche thundering down a mountainside, the cries of a thousand wounded souls - the echoes of everything that has ever broken reawaken in that scream.

The giant rocks forward. The ropes binding him to the floor creak and strain and then rip from their pegs. Still screaming, Father Ariandel grasps the golden vessel at his feet and slams it into the floor, into Friede’s blood. Flame darts from the cauldron and races up the trail of blood as if it were dry kindling. When it envelops Friede’s body, she does not burn. The flames weave themselves into her dress, her cuffs and hem and the edges of her veil. She rises slowly, like a puppet whose handler has just taken up the strings. 

Father Ariandel looms above her, hunched and berserk. His chair clings to his back. He pays no heed to the flames eating up the walls and the wooden niches blackening to bits. If once he feared fire, that fear has been consumed by something stronger still.

He embered her, Dunstan thinks. She’s Unkindled. Fire takes us and fire brings us back. He almost laughs. That’s that, then. The flame is loose.

When Friede looks at Dunstan from the flickering shadows beneath her veil, he knows she has passed a point of no return. She has become something more and less than herself, as all Unkindled can when driven to extremes. She is an instrument now. For these next minutes, she will know nothing but war.

“Come,” she says, and spreads frost across the floor.

~~~

Upstairs, Yorshka covers her ears against the clangor of combat. She is rocking in her chair like Father Ariandel and heaving with sobs she cannot hear. Once more she is trapped on the margins, helpless, useless, while the people she loves most of all fight for their lives. 

She tried so hard! She mastered her fear, risked her life dodging birch women in the woods, spoke to Friede alone, brought all her memories and compassion to bear, and it still wasn’t enough! Why is nothing she does ever enough? She never even healed Gwyndolin’s ankle. Now her poor brother has to fight on one good leg, and his muscles are not strong. 

Yorshka looks about the chapel for Priscilla, but Priscilla is not there. Perhaps she was never anything but a figment of Yorshka’s need to be more than a silly girl with little to offer. If her mother really had given her a quest, tasks to accomplish and people to save, that would mean Yorshka is important. It would mean she is capable. Without that calling from beyond the grave, she is just herself, frail and scared.

The smoke drifting up from below tells her that Gwyndolin and Dunstan have freed the flame. She couldn’t even do that much on her own!

Beside her chair, Friede’s black cloak lies next to the small satchel of supplies Yorshka brought from home. Nothing in there will help her. She picks it up anyway and holds it to her chest. It still smells faintly of her sweet flowers, her greatest contribution to the new age. She wishes she were home among those flowers, with her loved ones safe. 

Her hand brushes something hard at the bottom of the satchel. She reaches inside and touches cool metal, a rounded edge - her buckler. She’d forgotten about that. Eira and Morgott told her she isn’t ready to use the little shield, but she brought it to Ariandel anyway, just in case.

All at once, amidst the screams and smoke, a memory returns. The day Yorshka parried Morgott in training, he asked her what possessed her to do such a reckless thing. She told him it was the shape of his sword: it reminded her of the severed finger Sulyvahn brought her. Now Yorshka is not certain that was true. If Morgott’s sword were curved a little more, it would look like a scythe.

She cannot tell whether she is delirious or truly having a premonition, and she does not stop to think. Either way, she knows what she must do. Everything she has been through, all her visions and misadventures in Ariandel, have led her to this moment. She has one final chance to protect her family and jolt Friede from her violence.

And if she can do that, perhaps she will prove herself ready to climb Priscilla’s tower.

The greatwolf, still sitting outside the church doors, growls at Yorshka. The sound reaches her through the noise of battle. Her guardian does not want her to do what she is planning, nor would anyone who has ever loved her.

But some things simply must be done.

~~~

The chapel is a welter of chaos. Gwyndolin’s bones rattle every time Father Ariandel slams the cauldron into the floor. He can hardly see or breathe through the smoke. He blinks away as often as he can to avoid inhaling too much foul air, but fits of coughing wrack him when he reappears. He gives thanks that Father Ariandel is a large target, as he cannot aim true with his eyes stinging and streaming.

Casting restraint aside, Gwyndolin looses streams of magic at random. Carian swords and shooting stars and invisible comet shards pepper Father Ariandel’s hulking body. The giant does not so much as flinch beneath the assault. Friede’s first death broke something brittle inside him, and now he belongs to frenzy. He does not seem to care who or what he destroys with his vessel. Every time the cauldron strikes the floor, fire splashes across the stones.

Scalding is not Gwyndolin’s only concern: whenever he blinks away from Father Ariandel, he has to take care not to reappear in the midst of Friede’s frost magic. She is relying on it to keep Dunstan from getting close enough for a killing blow. It’s all over the floor in glittering, jagged lines now. The fire cannot melt it fast enough. 

Beyond this, Gwyndolin is scarcely aware of the deadly dance Dunstan and Friede are performing. It’s all he can do to keep propelling himself away from Father Ariandel’s crashing vessel. Even kneeling, his legs are shaking with exertion. Often he does not have time to aim before the flaming cauldron comes rushing at him again. He leaves arcs of Carian blades behind him when he vanishes and prays they strike home.

It’s only a matter of time before he makes a mistake. In the end he misjudges his point of reappearance and lands in a trail of Friede’s frost. Both his legs go numb at once. He has to crawl out of the ice, coughing, dragging half his body behind him like the snakes he lost. Father Ariandel closes the distance between them in two huge strides and raises his vessel with a howl.

Gwyndolin lifts both hands to the burning roof and shouts Dunstan’s name with all the breath in his aching throat. He has no way of knowing whether the Unkindled has heard his warning, nor time to make certain.

Gwyndolin draws back his right arm.

A moonlit sky splits the ceiling. Sharp rain pours down, needling father Ariandel’s head and shoulders, glinting amongst his feathers. The giant lurches back a step and claws at his face. He drops the vessel - upright, Dark be praised - and still Gwyndolin casts more arrows down upon him. His whole body is going cold as his magic drains from him, but surely it will not be long before one of those arrows finds the giant’s heart.

At last, Father Ariandel loses his balance and falls. The impact shakes the floor. Gwyndolin pushes himself up on wobbling arms to see a cluster of arrows embedded in the left side of the giant’s chest. A shudder ripples through that vast, wasted body, and then he is still.

Not far away, Friede is on her knees. An arrow in her calf has brought her down. Dunstan is holding his claymore to her throat.

~~~

Friede never loses consciousness. She is still aware when Dunstan slits her throat. She feels her life spill hot down her chest; she feels her body crumple into the snow. Like rags, she thinks. That is what I am. 

Let me live in Ariandel, she prays to whoever may be listening, or let me die ere I burn. Let me go.

But there is no mercy for her. Perhaps she deserves none.

Father Ariandel is not quite dead. His voice lingers after his body dissolves into dust, no longer frightened but resonant and penetrating: When the ashes are two, a flame alighteth.

Oh, please, no…

The words sink into Friede’s bones and stitch up her throat. Then they reach into the core of her, deeper and deeper until they touch the magic she foreswore when the First Flame consumed her. She could not bear to wield fire after that, not even the sacred flames of the Abyss.

But those flames still dwell in her, and they are awakening, licking up each nerve with exquisite precision. As they kindle, Friede's conscious mind slips beneath the surface. Rationality bows before a single command: Preserve the painted world. It’s all in vain - the flame has escaped its vessel - yet the imperative will not be denied. Friede is Unkindled, and to be Unkindled is to fight.

I will have Ariandel yet.

When she rises, she holds a second scythe in her left hand, half the length of the other with a blade that smokes with frost. Her body is wreathed in black and silver flame. Without thought, she reaches up and runs her hand along the flat of her great scythe. It too flares black.

In answer, Dunstan takes a woven greatsword from his back. It ignites at his touch. If some part of Friede grieves to see her enemy wielding Vilhelm’s weapon, it is very far away.

The dimmest corner of her mind whispers, Forgive me, my dragon of spring. I know no other way.

The two Unkindled rush at each other, trailing blackflame behind them. 

~~~

In another world, Eira told Dunstan about her final duel with Morgott. She pushed him so hard, she said, that his blood erupted out of him and he lost control of his body. He continued to fight even as the small part of him that was still lucid looked on in horror. Protecting the Erdtree was all that mattered.

That, Dunstan thinks, is what has happened to Friede. Blackflame is her cursed blood, the part of her she sealed away when she left the Sable Church. And now Father Ariandel has called it forth for one last clash.

If Friede was holding back before, that pretense is gone. She leaps high, twin serpents of flame coiling around her. From the edge of his vision Dunstan sees Gwyndolin cast one comet shard after another at her, but this time she does not fall. When she dives, Dunstan turns and runs. He is not quick enough. Blackflame erupts from the point of Friede’s landing and bites at his ankles. He goes sprawling, slapping at the flames on his trouser legs. 

He has not yet managed to right himself when Friede is upon him. He rolls away as she brings down both her scythes. They strike sparks from the floor where Dunstan lay seconds ago. The smaller one leaves behind an icy mist that freezes Dunstan’s breath into a cloud. 

Meanwhile, Gwyndolin flings three deep purple rocks at Friede. She glides nimbly away from the first two. The third collides with her legs and knocks her down. This gives Dunstan enough time to clamber upright, yet Friede on one knee is just as dangerous as Friede on her feet. She cups one hand to her mouth and blows across her palm. Blackflame surges across the chapel, right at Dunstan. Far from closing the distance between himself and Friede, he has no choice but to fling himself aside.

He stumbles as he goes. He is beginning to tire. He wonders if that is Friede’s goal: to force him to evade until he exhausts himself and makes a fatal error. And how many times can she return from death before the animating force within her runs dry?

Dunstan pushes this despairing thought from his mind. I only have to hit her once, he tells himself. One cut in the right place, and this will be over.

Friede does not intend to let him make that cut. When she closes with Dunstan again, she leaves no gaps between her attacks. One swing after another, Dunstan ducks and twists away from her smaller scythe and the frost it leaves hanging in the air. Ice forms in his beard and stings his cheeks. He never has room for a thrust. 

When Friede has driven him back, she jumps skyward again. Three of Gwyndolin’s blue Carian swords strike her back to little visible effect. She hangs there, suspended, flame winding around her, blades poised above her head. Gravity is nothing to her and she alone will decide when she comes down. She would be a beautiful sight were she not so terrifying.

Dunstan backs away, faster and faster, until his back hits a cold stone wall. When Friede plunges down, her fiery eruption misses his boots by inches. Dunstan has nowhere to retreat. Friede crosses both scythes over his throat, so cold they burn his skin. 

Dunstan’s mind goes blank. There is nothing he can do, he has no room to swing his sword -

A flash, more intuition than memory: Laurentius showing him how to flick open his casting hand just so…

Dunstan opens his left hand. Blackflame snaps from his palm, right under Friede’s face. 

Friede throws herself backwards, composure failing, almost dropping her scythes in her haste to get away from the fire. Before she can recover herself, Gwyndolin fires twelve dark stars at her. All of them hit her in the chest. 

Only when Dunstan sees the crystalline rage in her eyes does he realize he has gone too far.

Friede pounces on him first, so fast he cannot lift Vilhelm’s sword to block. In one smooth motion, she sweeps his feet out from under him with the shaft of her great scythe. Dunstan lands flat on his back and the air bursts from his lungs.

While he lies there wheezing and helpless, Friede turns to Gwyndolin and vanishes. Dunstan realizes with dread that the flames have melted most of the snow on the floor: Gwyndolin has no markers by which to track Friede’s movements. He chooses a direction and blinks at random.

He chooses wrongly. He reappears in the path of a stream of frost magic. One of the icy fangs pierces his wounded ankle and yanks him to the floor.

Friede fades back into view a short distance from Gwyndolin. She crosses her scythes and lunges.

Then Yorshka is between them, so suddenly that she must have been in the room for some time, watching, invisible. She lifts her thin left arm against both of Friede’s scythes.

Acid fills Dunstan’s mouth. A cry of despair tears from him. He pushes himself up and breaks into a run, skidding on the damp floor, though he knows he will never reach Yorshka in time. It’s too late for Friede to check her momentum. Dunstan is going to see Yorshka’s blood again.

Instead, metal scrapes metal. The sound of a blade sliding across a shield.

Dunstan slides to a halt, heart fluttering. Did she parry -

A soft, wet thud. A small noise of pain. Yorshka sinks to the floor, one shoulder drenched red. Friede’s smaller scythe hangs limp at her side; the great scythe drips with Yorshka’s blood.

That weapon slips from Friede’s hand. She backs away on unsteady legs, shaking her head as if that will dispel the scene before her.

Gwyndolin scoops his sister into his arms. He presses his hands to Yorshka’s shoulder, turns himself as red as she is, and starts to babble, Look at me, my darling, look at me, stay with me…

The momentary stillness shatters. Without warning the greatwolf charges down the steps, a storm of snow and fur, and seizes Friede in its jaws. She has no time to scream. Teeth sink into fabric and flesh; Friede’s dress turns scarlet in several places. 

The wolf flings her away. She lands near a pile of burning wood and curls in on herself, away from the flames, bleeding and broken. 

Silence descends like a guillotine.

Where there was violence, now there is golden light in Yorshka’s red hands. There is Gwyndolin’s frantic murmuring and Dunstan’s harsh breaths, which sound too much like sobs. There is the greatwolf’s low whine. There is the crackle of flame. There is Friede’s low groaning.

In the catacombs below, Vilhelm undoes his collar with shaking hands. The embers kiss his ruined throat.

Chapter Text

Somehow, Dunstan remembers how to move his legs. Some primitive part of him does, at least. His conscious mind trails several paces behind his body as he crosses the burning, debris-strewn chapel to where Gwyndolin and Yorshka are huddled. It’s only because of this detachment that Dunstan can bear to look at them. Cradled in her brother’s arms, Yorshka’s delicate face is eerily calm. She might be the subject of a tragic sculpture, a martyr dying in her god’s embrace, were her left side not so red.

Gwyndolin is talking to her, or rather encouraging her to talk to him so she will stay awake. “Tell me of our first ball, our night in Oolacile.”

Yorshka’s voice is thin and fading as breath on cold glass. “So beautiful thou wert…in thy fine new robes…with a flower in thine hair.”

“And thou wert my Princess Dusk,” Gwyndolin says. He sounds wrong: too gentle, too calm, the edges brittle. His hands, pressed to Yorshka’s wounded shoulder, are white-knuckled beneath a coating of blood. He is about to shatter.

Yorshka tries to giggle, though her shallow breaths can scarcely lift Gwyndolin’s hands. Only now does Dunstan see that one of her own hands rests beneath her brother’s. It is glowing faintly gold. Somehow, she has found the strength to work a heal on herself.

The sight snaps Dunstan back into his body. “Take her to Ursa and Miquella,” he tells Gwyndolin. “I’ll…finish things here.”

Yorshka’s brow knits. “Please…spare her. I do not wish her to die. She meant me no harm.”

She meant us harm, Dunstan thinks, but somehow that seems a lesser sin. For him and Gwyndolin and Friede, fighting is a part of life. They engaged combat by mutual agreement, accepting that they might be hurt or killed. Yorshka made no such contract.

Dunstan glances over his shoulder at the Unkindled woman. She is still curled in on herself amidst splinters of wood, bleeding through the scraps of her dress. From the looks of her, she is paying for her misdeeds in body and mind.

“You’ve a good heart, lass,” Dunstan sighs, “but are you sure?” The last thing he wants is to spare Friede only for her to abuse Yorshka’s trust as Sulyvahn did.

“Please,” Yorshka breathes. Her eyes slip shut and her head lolls on Gwyndolin’s shoulder.

The god needs no more inducement than this. He gives Dunstan a last anguished glance, then touches the silver band on his right ring finger to the matching one on Yorshka’s. 

“Hold to me, my love,” he murmurs. 

Gwyndolin’s signature purple magic envelops them, and they are gone.

Left behind, the greatwolf whines and lays its huge shaggy head on its paws.

When he is sure he will not be interrupted, Dunstan kneels beside Friede and turns her roughly onto her back, pinning her wrists above her head. She has little more consciousness left than Yorshka, but her pupils are wide with fear.

“Did you mean to hit her?” Dunstan demands. When Friede gives no response but a groan and a cough, he shakes her. “Did you mean to hit Yorshka? If you did, I swear to Dark I will set you on fire!”

Friede shudders, tries to breathe and coughs up a bubble of blood instead. “Nay, I would not… I bade her go…keep away…” Every fragment of speech is punctuated by pained gasps. Blood rattles in her chest. “Didst thou not hear me say so?”

Dunstan did. He also saw the horror in Friede’s face when her great scythe pierced Yorshka’s shoulder. At this moment, he does not care. The image of Yorshka’s bloodied body is burned into his mind, and he wants to hurt the one who put it there.

And yet, Yorshka asked him for clemency. The will of the dying is not his to refuse.

“You understand Yorshka wants you to live,” Dunstan goes on. “She thinks there’s still hope for you. Dark knows why. You haven’t taken any of the other chances she’s offered you.”

“I…was foolish.”

“She’s giving you a gift you don’t deserve. You’d best make good use of it.”

Friede’s face is wet and drained of color, yet she meets Dunstan’s gaze with all the solemnity of a knight. “I know not how.”

That is not the voice of a monster. Much as Dunstan wants to hear falseness in Friede’s words, he does not. Like so many others, imminent death has made her earnest.

Grimacing, he slings one of Friede’s arms around his shoulders. “Right. Bonfire.”

Friede’s pupils dilate even further, almost eclipsing her red-brown irises. “Why…”

“Why?” Dunstan scoffs. “Because you’ve had a wolf’s teeth in your insides and you won’t last another hour without healing.” 

The part of his mind that sounds like Elisabeth reminds him gently that he should understand why Friede is so afraid of fire. He is Unkindled: he knows what it is to be burned to ash.

Despite everything, his voice softens. “I’m not going to burn you. I’m going to sit there and think about what to do with you. And I’m going to rest.”

~~~

Gwyndolin does not recall much of his desperate flight to the Erdtree Sanctuary. Only shards linger in his mind, vivid and terrible. 

Kneeling in the golden fields outside Leyndell, blinking at the light-drenched sky. Yorshka’s body in his arms, so frail yet so heavy. 

His hands red with Yorshka’s blood.

Knowing with suffocating certainty that he cannot walk, much less carry his sister.

Plucking a blade of grass and twisting it into a loop as Gwynhael taught him. 

His hands red with Yorshka’s blood. 

Blowing on that loop of grass, his trembling lips sabotaging several attempts, at last producing a high clear whistle and waiting, praying, Yorshka’s heartbeat growing fainter all the while.

Torrent galloping across the fields with blue shimmers flying from his hooves. Riding to Leyndell with Yorshka slumped against his chest, suppressing hysterical laughter when he realizes he must be Eira now, this is how Eira brought him to Leyndell years ago. 

His hands red with Yorshka’s blood.

Clattering into the Erdtree Sanctuary. Gentle hands, skilled hands, lifting Yorshka down from Torrent’s back. His own voice, no longer controlled, begging Miquella to let him stay with his sister. The golden god’s solemn refusal. Morgott scooping him up, carrying him effortlessly down corridors that feel more like home than Anor Londo, and setting him fully clothed in the bathing pool.

“Calm thyself,” the Omen King said. Not unkind. Not negotiable.

Ragna came to him, a nimble little shadow. “Bad?” she asked.

Gwyndolin nodded. It was then, he thinks, that he started to cry.

He does not know how long he lies there on the steps leading down into the pool, half sunk in the hot Crucible-fed waters. Ragna holds his hand while he weeps and curses himself. He is warm for the first time since leaving Irithyll, yet he cannot stop shaking. Surely there must have been some mistake - he should be the one lying in Ursa’s infirmary with his shoulder torn open. It was his duty to throw himself in front of Yorshka, not the inverse. Never his sweet sister, his light in dark places.

Eventually Eira finds him. By then he is quieter but no less distraught. His wet cloak is so heavy that Eira has to help him crawl up the steps. She sets a neat pile of Miquella’s clothes at the edge of the pool, then helps Gwyndolin strip off his own wet things. Gwyndolin allows it; he is far beyond embarrassment. Eira talks to him all the while, simple statements to which Gwyndolin does not need to respond: “She’ll be all right. She’s in good hands - the best. You know that.”

Eira waits to ask Gwyndolin any questions until he is dressed in Miquella’s dry robes. Even then, she confines herself to one inquiry: “What cut your ankle?” Gwyndolin needs only two words - “frost magic” - to answer that, for which he is grateful.

“Well, the pool will have seen to any infection. The water is blessed.” With her left hand Eira conjures a needle and thread made of golden light - Radagon’s sewing kit, Miquella once called it with a playful smile. “My stitching isn’t as neat as Miquella’s or Ursa’s, but it’ll serve.”

Either the incanted needle is almost painless or Gwyndolin is too exhausted and heartsick to notice it moving in and out of his skin. His mind is bent in its entirety towards Yorshka. He has failed her. He should not be sitting here with a wound even Eira can stitch up while his sister may be dying. 

He looks down at his hands and is faintly surprised that they aren’t red anymore. Miquella’s must be, though, and Ursa’s. Red with Yorshka’s blood.

Gwyndolin’s mind circles around and around that thought as Eira works: Yorshka’s blood. He cannot escape it. Despite the pool’s sacred water and Miquella’s clean clothes, he still sees it, still smells it. He does not know when he will be able to stop.

He is glad when Eira begins turning his ankle from side to side to ensure it is not broken. For a moment the bright pain sweeps everything else away.

“You won’t be able to walk on this foot for a good while,” Eira says, frowning. “You’ve a nasty sprain. Frost magic didn’t do that.”

“I fell.” It seems a lifetime ago that he and Dunstan tumbled down that snowy hill outside the corvian settlement. 

“And this woman you were fighting, Friede - she hit the same ankle with her magic.”

“Aye. ‘Twas how she -”

Gwyndolin’s throat closes. He cannot bear to relate those seconds after Friede brought him down. The scythes, the flames, Yorshka, the buckler, the horrible wet thud, the red -

He bends over, clutching his stomach. Eira pulls him close as his shudders redouble.

“‘Twill not stop,” he says helplessly, like a child weeping on Gwyn’s shoulder again.

“The shaking? Let it be. It’ll stop when you’re ready.”

“Eira, she saved me. She saved me, she saved me…”

“It isn’t your fault. Yorshka isn’t little anymore. She knows her own heart and she makes her own choices.”
 
“She saved me.” It’s all Gwyndolin can say. He is stuck.

Eira runs a hand over Gwyndolin’s damp hair. “I know.”

Gwyndolin is only dimly aware of what happens next. Eira lifts him onto her back and carries him into the foyer of the Erdtree Sanctuary. She sets him down on a root emerging from the floor. She wraps a blanket around him. Morgott brings him tea. Eira holds the cup while Gwyndolin sips because his hands are shaking too much. When the cup is empty, she holds him instead. He shivers in her arms. She hums soft songs. They wait together.

Beyond their notice, six Omen children pick up Gwyndolin’s discarded clothes beside the bathing pool and heave them down the laundry chute.

~~~

Dunstan’s hands are trembling. That’s a bad sign. He is usually quite steady after a fight, when the world makes sense and he is assured that he has done no more or less than what he must. Not so now. His mind lingers on those last few seconds when everything went wrong, repeating them over and over like a nightmare he cannot escape.

He failed her. Yorshka was the first person he ever really wanted to protect, even before Elisabeth, the one spark of goodness in a world going to ruin, and he let Friede drive a scythe into her body.

He clenches his fists, hoping the trembling will stop. It does not.

If he had only been stronger, faster…

Dunstan does not often have thoughts like that; they are useless. But this time he cannot let the fight go. He needs to know what he could have done differently, what improvements he must make and mistakes he must avoid, to ensure the girl who once asked him if he could fly up to her tower is never hurt again. There must be something. There must be.

His sole comfort is that Friede isn’t doing any better. She has not said a word since Dunstan helped her upstairs to the bonfire in her chapel. The ragged wounds in her flesh have closed, but the bonfire has no power to remove the blood drying all over her clothes and skin. Dunstan feels itchy just looking at her, not that she seems to have noticed any discomfort. She is sunk too deep in misery for that, knees drawn up to her chest and head pressed onto them. She is shivering. 

When at last she speaks, she does not lift her head. Dunstan supposes she does not want to see the flames licking at her church. 

“Will the little one live?” she asks.

Dunstan does not answer at once. He watches the flames eat their unhurried way through the piles of old paintings leaning against the walls, half wishing they would turn him into ash along with Ariandel. That would be fitting. Failures are unfit even to be cinder: such was the law of the old lords.

Gods, he needs to get a hold of himself. He’s thinking nonsense now. Since when has he believed in the laws of the old lords?

“She will if her healers have anything to say about it,” he makes himself say, reaching for his usual surety and not quite grasping it.

“And what is to become of me?”

“Don’t know yet.” Dunstan considered locking Friede in Irithyll Dungeon, but he can’t bring himself to do that. Even with the jailers gone and the victims of Sulyvahn’s experiments put to rest, that place is haunted. Gwyndolin would do well to have the whole lot caved in. “I can’t let you go free, even if you didn’t mean to hurt Yorshka.”

“But thou wilt not…leave me amidst the flames?”

That would be a fair punishment for refusing to let Ariandel burn, and you know it, Dunstan thinks.

He is about to say as much when he becomes aware of another presence in the room. He looks up from the bonfire to find a phantom standing at the top of the cellar stairs, transparent as glass, the flames visible through his body. At first glance he is as withered as everything else in Ariandel. His armor is battered, his mail and cloak fraying. His face is hidden by a bushy beard and a pointed slave’s hood. Were this spirit made of flesh and blood, his hood would be red. Like the one Dunstan and Gwyndolin found in that abandoned house.

“We will all be left amidst flames should we fail to act,” says the phantom. He has a soft voice, halfway between mournful and unsettling, with an odd singsong quality. Dunstan recognizes it at once, and he is out of patience for its owner.

“You’re just as helpful as the day I met you in the Cleansing Chapel, Gael,” he says, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “We’ve been looking for you since we got here. Good of you to turn up after we did all the work.”

Gael, who is dipping Friede a sardonic bow, hardly seems to hear. “I have work of my own, ashen one.”

“Oh, do you? Is that why you left the painting? What does burning Ariandel have to do with any of this?”

“It is all. My lady’s new painting is the great hope.”

“For this world. What about our world? What about the end of our world? A corvian settler said you know something about that.”

Gael tilts his head to one side. “What would a humble slave knight know of the end of days?” he asks, matching Dunstan’s sarcasm drop for drop.

Dunstan forces himself to relax his clenched fists. He knows from his first brief meeting with Gael that the old man is cryptic at the best of times, and hostility is liable to make it worse.

He forces himself to speak evenly. “You do know something. When I touched your hand in the Cleansing Chapel, I saw a place where everything had turned to ash. Lin saw it too, in his dreams, before he decided to put out the First Flame. We thought it was a warning that the firelinking would burn down the world if we didn’t stop it. But if that’s true, why are we all dreaming of the ash place again?”

Gael’s mustache twitches with a smile. “Why indeed.”

“When Fire comes back, someone is going to start the firelinking again. That’s what the dreams mean, isn’t it? What else but Fire could make the ash place?”

“There will be fire, yes.”

Dunstan thinks of the argument he had with Gwyndolin on the hillside above the corvian settlement, about blackflame and what might happen if the Age of Dark were sustained beyond its natural expiration.

“It’s not…Dark-linking that’s going to end the world, is it?” he asks.

“There will be fire,” Gael repeats.

That doesn’t answer the question.

“Right,” Dunstan says through gritted teeth. Every second he spends with this strange old man is a second he could be with Gwyndolin and Yorshka. “If we really are seeing the end of the world, how can we stop it?”

“We go to its heart.”

Those words send a chill through Dunstan’s body. “To the future?”

“Aye, to the distant end. Follow me. I will show you the way.”

“I’ve got friends who need looking after first.”

“I will wait.”

“And you’d best give me real answers when I come back.”

Gael ignores him. He is chanting to himself again: “We will do our work, my lady will paint, and there may yet be a new world for us all - even for you, Elfriede.”

Friede, who until now has been unmoving and apparently oblivious, lifts her head from her knees. She winces at the sight of the flames.

“I desire no new world,” she says, voice flat.

Gael chuckles humorlessly. “As we are all so keenly aware.” 

With that, he gives Dunstan a last enigmatic nod and fades into nothing.

~~~

Gwyndolin spends an interminable period drifting in and out of consciousness. He slips beneath the surface of sleep until some noise or other jolts him awake, and Eira shushes him and says “Not yet,” and he sinks down again. Minutes or hours later, the cycle repeats. He has no idea how much time has passed when at last Miquella emerges from the infirmary. Gwyndolin jerks upright, alert in an instant, heart racing, sick with the need to know and the dread of what he might hear.

Miquella crosses the foyer in a few nimble strides, letting down his tumble of golden hair as he goes. His hands are not red with Yorshka’s blood. Gwyndolin cannot decide if that is a good omen or a bad one. It does not cross his exhausted, terrified mind that Miquella has simply washed his hands.

The god kneels in front of Gwyndolin and Eira’s root. His face is placidly unreadable. Gwyndolin opens his mouth to ask the terrible question, but his throat constricts around the words.

Miquella takes Gwyndolin’s hands. “She will live.”

A wave crashes over Gwyndolin’s body. It is as if he has been suspended in some airless, timeless place and Miquella has given him permission to breathe and live again. Colors and sounds burst back into full vividness. Suddenly everything is too bright, his breathing too fast. His head buzzes; his vision goes black at the edges. He hardly feels himself pitch forward into Miquella’s arms. He takes no heed of the breathless nonsense, half tears, half laughter, burbling from his lips. All that matters are those three words: She will live. 

He is not going to lose his sister.

Miquella holds him while he tries to babble his gratitude. Every attempt dissolves into sobs and Yorshka’s name.

“I understand,” Miquella says. “I understand perfectly.”

Only when the storm has exhausted itself, when Gwyndolin is more or less lucid and brushing tears from his cheeks, does Miquella draw back and fix him with a serious expression.

“She lost a good deal of blood,” the god says. “She will be weak for a time. She will regain use of her left arm in time, but she may never recover her full dexterity. She will need you in the days to come, Lin.” 

Gwyndolin can only nod. He is still reeling. Of course he will be here for Yorshka! Where else should he be? Having failed to protect his sister in battle, the very least he can do is watch over her while she heals.

Eira puts her arm around him. “When your ankle is better, you can walk with her like I did with you.”

“May I see her?” Gwyndolin manages to say.  He still sounds dangerously close to tears, and he swallows hard. He cannot present himself at Yorshka’s bedside this way.

“Yes, but go softly. She must rest,” Miquella says. The god passes a critical eye over Gwyndolin’s trembling body and bandaged ankle. “And so must you.”

“I shall rest nowhere save at my sister’s side.” There. That sounds more like himself.

Miquella’s eyes narrow, but he helps Gwyndolin to his feet nonetheless. 

It is a blessing that the infirmary is only across the foyer: Gwyndolin has not been so unsteady since he first learned to walk without the aid of his serpents. Even with Miquella acting as his crutch, he is spent by the time they reach Yorshka’s room - his old room. This is where Ursa and Miquella treated the wounds Aldrich made, where they fed and washed Gwyndolin until he could do it himself. This is where he slept every night of his recovery. It is just as he remembers it: the copper-leafed vines trailing over the walls, the cozy window seat, the patchwork quilt on the bed.

But oh, gods, in that bed is…

“We thought it might comfort her,” Miquella says, “to stay in the room where her brother healed.”

“‘Twas most kind,” Gwyndolin says, only half aware. 

His eyes are on Yorshka, who is lying against the pillows, pale as Irithyll’s snow. Her skin is almost translucent, as it was after she spent her magic easing the corvians’ deaths. Her hands, folded atop the covers, are webs of blue veins. Her closed eyelids look no thicker than the membrane of a cat’s eye. Gwyndolin cannot see much of her wounded shoulder beneath the covers, and what he can see is swathed in bandages. That is a mercy.

Ursa sits beside the bed. Her sturdy frame looks all the stronger in contrast to Yorshka’s frailty. Practical as ever, the perfumer wastes no time with greetings. 

“She’ll sleep in peace a while. I mixed her something for the pain,” she says, gesturing at the censer hung above the bed. It is diffusing a light, woody smoke. She runs her sharp eyes over Gwyndolin and clicks her tongue. “You look like you could do with some too. Poor love. This isn’t how you meant to come back to us, I’m sure.”

The stoic response Gwyndolin has prepared dies on his tongue. He has nothing to hide from this woman. She spoon-fed him broth, counseled him as the mother he never knew did not, encouraged him when he could not take three steps without collapsing - and in her presence, he melts.

Before he knows it, he is a babbling child again. “The fault was mine, she wished to heal me but I would not allow it, she was so weary… Had I allowed her to heal me, I might not have - I might have prevented - I might -”

Friede might not have brought him to his knees had he not been fighting on a twisted ankle, and Yorshka would not have had to save him, is what he wants to say. It will not come. It hurts too much to speak it aloud, even to Ursa, who has probably heard tales like this thousands of times.

The perfumer saves him the trouble. “Hush. This girl would have wanted to protect you even if you had two good legs and all your snakes. That’s her way. You know that.”

“I should tell you,” Miquella adds, “that we believe Yorshka attempted to heal herself. Had she not worked a spell to slow the bleeding, she might have died.”

“I’ve seen soldiers wiser and stronger than your sister lose their heads at the sight of their own wounds,” Ursa says. “You should be proud of her.”

Gwyndolin stares at the perfumer. “When did she…”

“Must have been just after she was wounded. Anything else would have been too late.”

Gwyndolin tries to resolve those blurred moments. Was there a golden glow beneath Yorshka’s hands? He cannot recall. He must have overlooked it amidst all the violence and horror. But if Ursa is correct, that means his baby sister, bleeding and terrified, had the presence of mind to save her own life.

Oh, my darling.

He sinks down on the edge of the bed, overcome. He has known for years that Yorshka is growing up - has indeed been proud of her for it - but he has avoided looking too closely at it. Some part of him thought that if he just turned the other way, Yorshka would remain the little girl he held on his lap beneath the moon. Her hurts would always be simple and easy to soothe. He could always keep her safe.

Now he has no choice but to confront the truth with open eyes. The evidence is incontrovertible: Yorshka is becoming someone new. She probably has been for some time, and Ariandel was a point of no return. For the first time, Gwyndolin realizes he does not know the young woman before him, who kneels with the dying in swamps of blood, negotiates peace with her enemies, and throws herself in front of wolves and scythes alike to protect her family. He is not ready to know her. He is afraid where she may go.

But if he loves her, he must see her as she is, not as he wants to see her. He will not be his father.

He reaches out and tucks a lock of Yorshka’s hair behind one delicate pointed ear. In her sleep, Yorshka nuzzles her cheek into his hand.

“When thou’rt well,” Gwyndolin murmurs, “we must speak. Thou must tell me who thou art, and what thou seek’st to prove by thy recent deeds, and to whom. If ’tis redress for thy part in my capture thou seek’st still, I beg thee to banish such thoughts. If thou seek’st some end of thine own, prithee share it with me. I will listen and hear what thou sayest. Only promise me thou shalt live, my dearest one.”

Yorshka’s eyes flutter open. She smiles a strange, prescient smile. “I shall live. I have yet to climb the tower.”

Before Gwyndolin can muster the nerve to ask what this means, Yorshka is asleep again.

~~~

When Miquella comes out of the infirmary, Eira expects him to say something about Gwyndolin and Yorshka: how long they will take to heal, whether they will stay in Leyndell for the duration of their recovery or return home when they are strong enough. Thus, she thinks she has misheard him when he asks, “Where is Gwynhael?”

“He wanted to see Gransax, so I took him up on the walls,” Eira says. “He’s been sitting there thinking about things all day.”

“Good. He can stay there as long as he likes. Better that we keep him away from the sanctuary for now.”

“But won’t Lin want to see him?”

“I will not allow it while Yorshka is yet so weak. Lin is fragile. His brother’s condition might prove too much to bear.”

Eira sighs. She can see the logic in this, but she doesn’t like it. “You’re saying we need to be patient.”

Miquella half grins at her. He knows Eira hates to be patient. “Yes, consort mine.”

~~~

Dunstan is sorely tempted to leave Friede by the roadside beyond Irithyll’s walls and let her make her own way in the world. Thoughts of Yorshka restrain him. Instead, he takes Friede to the Darkmoon barracks and leaves her in the care of the several startled knights who are not on duty. Friede does not protest. She goes straight to the end of the aisle between the bunks and sits down with her face to the wall.

The knights ask Dunstan who Friede is and why he brought her here. They ask if, in light of Yorshka’s plea for pardon, they should still treat her as a foe. 

Dunstan gives Friede’s huddled, bloodied form one last look.

“We’ll see.”

After that, Dunstan loses all sense of where he is going. He is still trembling, his mind cycling through all the ways he could have averted Yorshka’s injury. He should not have taunted Friede with his pyromancy, he should not have let her back him into the wall in the first place…

As he thinks and condemns, his feet steer him through Irithyll’s streets. Somewhere along the way he notices that the avenues are silent and the cathedral clock is displaying an early morning hour. That suits him just fine. He does not want to speak to anyone yet.

Soon, without knowing how he got there, he has reached the small house he shares with Elisabeth. Before going in, he glances down the street at Gwyndolin’s manor. It is dark, but smoke is rising from the chimney: Siegward must be looking after the place. That comforts Dunstan a bit. Everything else has devolved into tragedy, but at least Gwyndolin won’t come home to a cold house devoid of fresh food.

Dunstan spends a good minute on the doorstep, fumbling in his many pockets and pouches for his key. When he finally finds it, he is shaking so much that he misses the keyhole several times. All the racket he’s making is probably scaring Elisabeth. It would be just his luck if his wife came at him with a candlestick as soon as he opened the door.

Inside, the house is dark save for a few clusters of Yorshka’s flowers, as always: neither Dunstan nor Elisabeth needs light. Dunstan moves around the wooden furniture, letting the rhythm of his steps announce his identity so Elisabeth knows he is not an intruder. 

He finds her in their bedroom, smoothing down the patchwork quilt and folding a throw blanket at the end of the bed. As in everything she does, she works by feel. Dunstan loves to watch her capable, sensitive hands moving with graceful economy. Any other time he would have pulled her into his arms and kissed those hands. This morning he is too heavy with sorrow.

Elisabeth straightens at the sound of his approach. She must know something is wrong, because she does not greet him with quiet joy, as she always does when he returns from a journey. 

“My love?” she says instead, her voice as taut as her body. 

“Lisbet,” is all Dunstan can manage. He hates the tremor in his voice. He doesn’t want her to hear it, doesn’t want to be a burden to her; he is supposed to be a protector, for Dark’s sake…

Elisabeth guides him down onto the edge of the bed. “What befell thee?”

“There was a fight.” Dunstan can feel himself slipping, bits of internal armor falling away and clattering to the floor of his mind. “Yorshka got hurt. It’s bad. Lin took her to Leyndell. He must be beside himself. I think…I might be beside myself too.”

“Tell me.”

Dunstan breaks. His body, so long rigid with adrenaline, goes limp in Elisabeth’s arms. The last of his barriers crumble, and with his head on Elisabeth’s shoulder and his fingers in her hair, he tells her the story. Yorshka’s attempted diplomacy. Friede refusing to burn the painting. His own mistakes. Yorshka’s sacrifice. Father Ariandel and the greatwolf, two avatars of the painted world intervening on behalf of their respective champions.

“Friede is Unkindled,” Dunstan says, helpless and hating it. Elisabeth’s arms around him are stronger than his own. “She was so fast, and the flame brought her back every time I ran her through, and I couldn’t…”

“Where is she now?”

“Here, in the Darkmoon barracks. Yorshka doesn’t want her killed, but Yorshka’s too kind for her own good. Sometimes she’s wrong about things like this. I don’t know what to do, Lisbet.”

“Let me see to her.”

“No.”

“If Lady Yorshka begged succor for this woman, I must offer it. I am a healer. I am oathbound to serve friend and foe alike.”

“She doesn’t need healing. There were bonfires in Ariandel.”

“A bonfire provideth not for -”

“It’s not safe.”

“My love.” Elisabeth takes Dunstan’s face between her hands. “I shared Firelink Shrine with all manner of unsavory souls: a petty thief, a Finger of Rosaria, servants of the Sable Church, and Patches. I am not afraid. What have I to fear, if Lady Friede is unarmed and the Darkmoon Knights stand watch?”

This is a fair point, and Dunstan is too tired and heartsore to argue it very far. “Let me go with you, at least.”

“Nay. Rest and permit me to tend to this matter.”

Dunstan falls back on the bed and listens to his thoughts chase each other around his mind. “You know I can never rest at times like this. I need to do something.”

But there is nothing he can do. There is no one left to kill, and his hands are empty and useless.

“Thou couldst bring Master Gwyndolin and Lady Yorshka something from home, to comfort them as they convalesce,” Elisabeth suggests.

This is such an obvious course of action that Dunstan is ashamed he did not think of it himself. He really is dense when it comes to gentleness.

“Aye, I could do that,” he says.

Elisabeth lifts his head into her lap. “But for this moment, rest. ’Tis too long since I held thee.”

Dunstan cannot deny it’s been too long since he was held.

~~~

Later, when his head is clearer, Dunstan lets himself into Gwyndolin’s darkened manor and climbs the stairs to the bedrooms. Gwyndolin’s chambers are immaculate, everything in its usual place, so Dunstan knows exactly where to find what he’s looking for. When he has it, he touches the ring on his right hand and blinks away to Leyndell.

His friends at the Erdtree Sanctuary are very kind. They offer him food and a hot bath. Much as he wants both, he politely declines and asks to see Gwyndolin and Yorshka. With some reluctance, Miquella agrees.

The two siblings are asleep in bed. They are breathing in unison and lying so close together their foreheads are almost touching. Yorshka’s left shoulder is thickly bandaged.

Dunstan stands there for a moment, struggling with a lump in his throat. Then he unfolds his offering: Gwyndolin’s favorite silk shawl, teal with gold lilies. He spreads it over both sleepers and shuts the door behind him.

~~~

The young Darkmoons are staring at her. Friede knows what she must look like to them, with her blood-soaked dress in tatters. She probably smells like death. She does not care as long as she is not on fire. Let it be her penance to sit here exposed and filthy.

She was a fool to think she could ever become Priscilla. Whatever chance she might have had at learning gentleness burned away when the First Flame took her. Of course she fought; that is all she knows how to do. 

But just for a moment, holding Yorshka’s hand, she could see another path. She could imagine herself spilling Ariandel’s flame and leaving the painted world for new and happier things. It seemed possible. And part of her wanted it to be.

Instead she put a scythe through that sweet, naïve girl’s body. If there was hope for Friede, she killed it herself. Now Ariandel is burning, and with it everything she knows about herself and her purpose. Her home is gone. There will be no new one. She is falling.

There is a soft commotion at the door: protests, gentle insistence. Friede does not look up. It has nothing to do with her; how can it? In this world, she is no one.

But then fabric rustles near, and a woman’s low voice says, “Lady Friede? Might I ask for thine hand? I cannot see.”

Friede is so startled to be called by name that she lifts her head in spite of herself. The woman before her is dressed in a green gown embroidered with gold to match her long fair hair, loosely braided over her shoulder. She is carrying a cloth bundle under one arm. With the other, she reaches out towards Friede.

Seeing no alternative, Friede takes her hand. Her fingers brush old, leathery burn scars.

Scarred hands and blindness. With a jolt, Friede puts the two together. “Thou’rt a -”

The woman - the Fire Keeper - kneels down and sets her burden on the floor. “Ah, thou’rt lower than I presumed.”

Friede smirks bitterly. In many ways, my lady.

“My name is Elisabeth. Dunstan, the man who conducted thee here, is mine husband. If his tales be true, I imagine thou’rt in need of fresh clothing. We of Irithyll keep a store of clean garments for those who come to us lost and alone. I brought thee several sets that might serve, as I do not know thy stature.”

Friede is unprepared for the upwelling of feeling - surprise, confusion, shame, gratitude - that the bundle of clothes provokes. She has to swallow before she speaks, and even then her voice is a croak. “I warrant no such kindness from thee. I lately sought to take thine husband’s life.”

Elisabeth smiles, at once mild and unyielding. “This being so, thou hast no right to refuse me.”

Chapter Text

Yorshka wakes.

She knows, upon fighting through the fog of Ursa’s perfume, that she will not be awake for long. The woody smoke from the censer above the bed is all around her, in her, pulling her back down into painless sleep. The two clear patches that have suddenly appeared in the mist on her mind will close again. But for a few moments, she can push her head through those holes, burned by two thoughts of rare clarity, and breathe the waking world.

The first thought is for her brother. It always is.

Yorshka tilts her head - so heavy - to one side. Gwyndolin is lying beside her, curled beneath his favorite silk shawl. He is trembling in his sleep. 

With a supreme effort, Yorshka begins to push herself up on her uninjured arm. It seems to take her hours to lift herself an inch, her whole body shaking with the exertion, but she makes it just high enough to kiss Gwyndolin’s cheek. I am here, she thinks. I will not leave thee. It is worth the struggle. The furrow in Gwyndolin’s brow smooths and his breathing eases. Yorshka does not doubt he knows her touch even in sleep.

Although she wants to wrap her arms around Gwyndolin and hold him close, Yorshka has neither the time nor the energy. With every heartbeat she feels herself slip another notch down that gentle, inexorable slope into oblivion. She must address the second thought that woke her before she sinks again.

She tilts her head to the other side and meets Miquella’s honey-colored eyes.

“I must write a letter,” she says to the god seated at her bedside. 

That’s what she tries to say, at any rate. It doesn’t all come out. Yorshka’s mouth is cottony and her lips seem to have swollen to several times their normal size. When she lifts a leaden hand to touch them, however, they are as small as usual. More effects of the perfume, she supposes, vaguely pleased by her own rationality.

Miquella leans forward in his chair. “Are you in pain? Shall I refill the censer?”

No, that is the last thing Yorshka needs. 

“I must write a letter,” she repeats. This time she thinks the word “letter” came out clearly even if everything else was a mutter.

Miquella seems to understand. “No need for that, little one. If there is something from your home you require, I shall send for it.”

When Yorshka tries to explain that it isn’t a material thing she needs, her voice goes thin and wobbly. She settles for shaking her head as hard as she can (not very). 

“Is there someone you wish to see?” Miquella asks.

Yorshka shakes her head again. It makes her vision swim. She’s running out of time. She knows Miquella is only being kind, but she wishes he would listen to her!

“Then this matter can wait until you are stronger,” Miquella says. “You are in no state to -”

“Please,” Yorshka says. She doesn’t have the strength or the clarity to make Miquella understand that although there is someone she wants to see, that person will not be permitted to see her. A letter is her only other choice, her only other means of knowing. And she needs to know. 

“Make a bird,” she begs. Her voice sounds like it might snap in two. The words, however, are clear.

Miquella sighs. “Will it bring you peace?”

Yorshka nods. The motion darkens her vision.

With reluctance in every movement, Miquella steps through a side door into another part of the infirmary and returns a moment later with a sheet of parchment. He pulls his chair closer to Yorshka’s bedside table and spreads the sheet flat upon it.

“Tell me what you wish to say. I shall write. Then you really must go back to sleep.”

Yorshka gathers the fraying threads of her consciousness and begins to speak. 

What follows is not a dictation - Yorshka lacks the coherence for that. It’s all she can do to make her thoughts understood. She can tell from the way Miquella’s eyes narrow that he comprehends her aims quite well and does not entirely approve. Still, he writes, and when he is done he folds the parchment into the shape of a bird with thoughtless, automatic gestures and places it in Yorshka’s right palm. 

Miquella does not need to remind her how to activate the spell woven into the page. With all that remains of her consciousness, Yorshka holds the letter close and envisions the face of its intended recipient. The last thing she sees is the bird lifting off her palm in a papery rustle of wings.

~~~

Something strange is happening to Sirris. Interruptions. Chunks of time, lost.

It happens first when Gwynevere is leading them through the castle corridors. 

“You’re not angry with your brother for putting out the First Flame?” Amalie asks.

“Angry?” Gwynevere’s voice hardens; her step quickens. Beneath her warmth is something fierce that seems to call out to the fierceness in Amalie. “The First Flame consumed my father and my sons. It drove mine husband to madness. It scattered my family and condemned my brother, if thou speak’st truly, to an age of lonely duty. Nay, child, I am not angry with him. Fear the dark I may…”

She pivots to face Amalie, scattering a dark cloud of humanity.

“…but I am no friend of Fire.”

“Then you’ll come see Captain Gwyndolin?”

“Of course I shall come, but I fear I cannot stay. I will show thee…”

And then Sulyvahn’s beast is there, in the humanity smoking from the edges of the corridor. Exposed ribs clawing at the air. Hands clasped in supplication.

Sirris falls into herself and is gone.

When she emerges, she remembers nothing of what happened in the depths of her own mind, but she knows she has been fighting a battle. She is cold and shaking. Amalie is looking at her with dawning alarm.

The next time it happens, they are in an inner courtyard bustling with people. The castle’s residents have set up a makeshift marketplace, a labyrinth of rickety stalls. Some of the vendors are trading in cloth and fabric, while others are shaping humanity into weapons while their patrons dictate preferences. In one quiet corner a man in scholar’s robes is teaching a group of young people their letters. Small children, the first Sirris has seen in years, dart through the crowd trailing streamers of humanity behind them. One boy runs up to Gwynevere, and she kneels so he can pin a glowing leaf behind her ear.

“I feared for my life when mine husband began his…studies,” Gwynevere says, smiling at the boy as he runs off. “’Twas the Paledrake’s knowledge he sought. I knew what would become of him when he found it, and I could not bear to see it. I fled Lothric Castle and wandered the countryside for a time, offering succor where I might. Travelers told terrible tales of my sweet Lin’s fate. Some dark power had devoured him, they said. When the flame perished, I…”

“You thought the stories must be true,” Amalie says. 

“When last I saw Lin, he swore he would not allow Father’s flame to fade while he drew breath.”

“That’s why you didn’t go to Irithyll. You didn’t think the captain would be alive to meet you.”

“Aye, child. I returned here, quite forsaken, and found that many others had done the same. They came fleeing homes turned to ash or plagued by the hollowing curse. We were all of us lost.”

Amalie’s hands lift, mimicking the gestures a nearby merchant is using to shape a sword from pure Dark. “You built something new.”

“No longer do I name myself a goddess or queen. I am a mother to these good folk, and they are my children. When the women labor in childbed, I deliver their babes into new life. I teach the little ones to read. I tend the wounds of those who defend this stronghold from the worms and wolves. ’Tis fine work. I am content in it.”

Amalie nods. “So you can’t stay in Irithyll forever because you have a family here, too.”

Gwynevere says something about Gwyndolin in response, her eyes shining with happy tears. Sirris does not hear it. The word “family” has lodged in her mind, and the humanity in the corners of the courtyard seizes upon it. Hodrick takes shape from the black mist, peaked helm and rippled sword. His lips shape a silent reproach:

You’ll be mad soon enough.

Sirris thinks he might be right. 

When she falls this time, she falls in body as well as soul. Her knees strike the cobblestones and her mind swallows her whole.

She cannot have been gone for more than a minute. When she comes back to herself, Amalie is cradling Sirris’s head against her chest and saying, “…she can rest?”

“I’m so sorry, my lady,” she hears herself mutter. She needs to get a hold of herself, for Fire’s sake! It’s her own mind shaping the humanity now; Bernice is nowhere in sight. “Such weakness is unbecoming of a knight.”

Do you feel your sanity slipping, dear little Sirris? Hodrick says.

The dark wings swoop down on her again.

When she awakens, she is lying in a small bedchamber, looking up at the wooden underside of a canopy. Someone has removed her armor and left her in her shirtsleeves. A thick quilt is spread over her shoulders, but she is still shaking. Amalie is sitting on the edge of the bed twisting a chain of humanity sprites around her arm. Her green eyes are jewels in the dark.

When she sees Sirris is awake, she shakes her arm to send the sprites away. “You need to tell me, ma’am,” she says without preamble. “You can’t put it in a box and pretend you’re fine. It’s out of the box now. I saw those things Bernice turned into. If you ignore them, they won’t ever leave you alone.”

For once, Sirris has no argument. It’s obvious Amalie is right. Hodrick’s silhouette is standing in the corner of the room, leaning on his sword, and Sirris is beginning to wonder if he will ever go away.

She sits up and grips Amalie’s wrists hard. “Can you see him?”

Amalie turns Sirris’s face towards her. “Don’t look at it. It only has as much power as you give it.”

“Can you see him?”

“I can see him.”

“What do you see, Amalie? Tell me exactly.”

Amalie glances over her shoulder. “A man in tatty armor. He has a round shield and a greatsword that… I know its name, but I don’t know how to say it. The edges are like fire.”

“A flamberge.” Relief leaves cold sweat on Sirris’s skin. If Amalie can see Hodrick too, that means Sirris isn’t hallucinating. The humanity really is taking the shape of her fears.

“Bernice turned into him at the end of the duel,” Amalie says. “Who is he?”

There’s no way around it now.

“Holy Knight Hodrick.” Sirris takes a shaky breath. “My grandfather.”

Amalie blinks at her. “Your… Only, I think I’ve seen him before. As a phantom, in the Undead Settlement.”

“I am certain you did.”

“A mad phantom.”

“Yes.”

“You said there’s a mad phantom’s altar in the pit. Did your granddad make it?”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Amalie puts her arms around Sirris. “I’ve got you. You can tell me anything and I’ll keep you safe. If you get scared, squeeze my arm. I’ll be your shield.”

No one has ever offered to keep Sirris safe before. It’s enough to put a lump in her throat.

“You will hate me.”

“I won’t. I told you, I used to steal humanity to keep myself from hollowing. You’re not going to shock me.”

Sirris links her hands at Amalie’s back and puts her head on the young woman’s shoulder. A plea slips out despite herself: “Promise me.”

“I promise you, ma’am.” Amalie strokes Sirris’s dark hair, loose now. Sirris used to dream of Gwyndolin holding her like this. “Tell me everything. We’ll set it on fire together.”

She doesn’t know why, but with Amalie’s heartbeat beneath her cheek, Sirris almost believes they can.

“My grandfather was a Darkmoon Knight,” she begins, “a gifted swordsman and an honorable man. He taught me to fight when I was a little girl. I was small and thin. It did not deter him. One day he presented me with an estoc, and I fell in love with it.”

“And you fenced for the captain and he gave you his miracle and said you’d make a fine knight one day.”

“Yes.” 

Sirris’s chest constricts with the memory of that afternoon in the cathedral. Her little hands in Gwyndolin’s silky gloved ones. The purple glow blooming between them. Sirris wide-eyed with awe, Gwyndolin so beautiful and so cold.

“I grew to womanhood in peace,” she goes on. “I trained and I learned. My swordplay improved. One day I became a knight, as Master Gwyndolin said I would. There was no prouder man than my grandfather on the day I received my veil and armor. Those were blessed times.”

“What changed?”

“The First Flame faded, as was its way. Master Gwyndolin called upon five Lords of Cinder to rise and link the flame anew, and all of them refused.”

“So the bells woke Dunstan and the other Unkindled.”

“Yes, but before that, my grandfather offered his own soul as kindling for the linking of the fire. He could have done it, I believe. He was strong.”

“He didn’t do it?”

“Far from it. On the night he was to be anointed and sent to the kiln, he drew steel on Master Gwyndolin in the sight of all his knights.”

Amalie’s grip tightens. However she is imagining the scene, it cannot compare to the reality branded on Sirris’s mind. What she remembers most is the stillness, those few suspended seconds when no one moved because no one could believe what was happening, Hodrick included. Surely Gwyndolin could not be standing before his own altar with a swordpoint quivering at his unprotected throat. Nothing like that had ever happened in holy Irithyll.

And then, with slow and terrible composure, the Allfather lifted his hand, and the stillness shattered.

“The whole of the Darkmoon knighthood was assembled,” Sirris says. “We were strong in those days. We had little difficulty subduing my grandfather and driving him from the city.”

“And he became a Mound-maker.”

Any other time, Sirris would have told Amalie to stop interjecting so often. Now she welcomes the interruptions. They give her time to catch her breath. She is finding that increasingly difficult.

“I never knew,” she says, “what turned him against us. Perhaps the thought of burning was too much to bear. Perhaps he had been plotting against Master Gwyndolin in secret for some time.” 

In the corner, Hodrick’s illusion chuckles nastily. Sirris did not think humanity sprites were capable of reproducing such a sound.

Amalie hears it too. “Piss off, you. You’re not real.”

Sirris would have laughed had she any breath. It feels as though there’s a knife between her ribs.

“I did the only appropriate thing,” she says. Her voice is growing tight and she knows she is about to cry. “I went to Master Gwyndolin and told him I knew nothing of my grandfather’s plot. I swore my loyalty. Then I offered him my sword to snap over his knee if he saw fit. It was his right to dismiss me, traitor’s kin that I was.”

“Oh, Sirris. What did he say?”

She will never forget it. “He said we are not our fathers, or our grandfathers.” 

“He knows that better than anyone. I hope he told you it wasn’t your fault.”

“He returned my sword to me.” It was only then, in the aftermath of that terrible night, that Sirris saw Gwyndolin’s hands were trembling. He was as frightened as she. She wanted to hold him and did not dare. “He was mistaken.”

Amalie draws back to look at Sirris, eyes blazing. “What? Of course he wasn’t! You stayed with him for years after that, even when he decided to put out the flame.”

“No.” Sirris shakes her head hard. Hot droplets scatter from her eyelashes. “I repaid his generosity with cowardice.”

The humanity-Hodrick chuckles again, louder. 

“Shut up!” Amalie flings over her shoulder. “Don’t listen to it, ma’am. It might look like your granddad, but it’s just the part of you that hates yourself.”

Sirris is shaking worse than ever. “Amalie, I cannot do this.”

Amalie shifts behind Sirris and tucks her against her chest. “You’re doing it right now. Go on. Drag it into the light and set it on fire.”

Despite Sirris’s hitching breaths, the words come of their own accord, like poison drawn from a wound. “After my grandfather’s betrayal, I was never certain of myself again. I wondered if his madness was in me also. It seemed only a matter of time until I lost myself as he had. When Sulyvahn staged his coup, I had my answer.”

Amalie holds Sirris very tight, so tight she can feeling nothing but the girl’s wiry arms. “What happened?”

“I ran.”

The words fall like an executioner’s axe. In the silence that follows, Amalie’s heart beats five times.

“It was Master Gwyndolin who commanded us to run, but he did not intend that we should abandon the city. He meant only for us to retreat, gather our strength, free Yorshka from her tower and then find him. He did not need to tell us so. We understood. But I…”

“You didn’t come back.”

Something comes loose in Sirris, and then she is shuddering, crying, and all the words she has held back for years are pouring out of her at once.

“Sulyvahn was taking us, Amalie,” she gasps. “We were disappearing. We never knew how or when or who would be next. He sent my comrades back as witches with burning stakes, still wearing the Darkmoon armor so we would know what he had done. He sent them back as beasts who prayed for death, and I could not give it to them, I could not…”

Her voice dissolves into sobs. Amalie rocks her back and forth. Still she cannot stop the words.

“I was not afraid to die. I was afraid that if I stayed, if I fell, he would take me and turn me into something else. I did not want to be something else!”


“I know, ma’am.”

“My grandfather told me when we banished him from the city that we would all be mad someday, and he was right, oh gods, he was right, I ran away just like him! Master Gwyndolin gave me back my sword and I let Aldrich eat him; I let them all disappear and die so I could live!”

Amalie is very still. “So all this… This is why you’re so hard on yourself. You have to be perfect so the captain knows you’re not a traitor like Hodrick. You have to be perfect because you’re alive and the other knights aren’t.”

“Is it not so?” The words tear from Sirris’s throat.

“No,” Amalie says. 

“Do not excuse my behavior. I cannot bear it!”

“You didn’t go mad, ma’am. I know that because I was in your place once, when the evangelists were burning my neighbors. You were scared, and you had good reason to be. Anyone would have run.”

“My companions did not.”

“Maybe they would have if they’d had time.”

That stops Sirris cold for a moment. She has never thought about it that way. 

Amalie seizes her opportunity. She takes Sirris’s shoulders in hand and looks her full in the face. “You think you bought your life with the lives of your friends, so you don’t want to waste it. Well, listen to me. If you go on like this, you will waste it. You spend all your time alone, you’re terrified of failing, you’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist, and you’re not happy. That’s the funny thing about ghosts: they’re heavier than they should be.”

The logic in this is so lovely, so tempting. 

Sirris takes shelter in anger. “How do you carry your ghosts?” she snaps, voice raw. “How do you live knowing your very humanity is stolen?”

“I told you,” Amalie shrugs, “I do the best I can. I protect people. I try to be kind. That’s all I can do.” 

“And what am I to do?”

“The same thing.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

Amalie sighs. “Right. On the return journey, we’re going down the pit in the Undead Settlement. That’s where you and Dunstan killed Hodrick, isn’t it? You can make peace with your granddad there. And when we’re home - does the captain know you ran away?”

“He knows I was not in the city when he returned from Leyndell.”

“Then tell him what you told me. I’m sure he’s guessed it already and he doesn’t think any less of you for it. You need to hear that from him.”

Sirris lets her shoulders sag. Her sobs have subsided now that her confession is made, and she is cold and very tired. She does not feel better, just drained dry. She has never cried so much in her life. 

“Will that put the ghosts to rest?”

“No, but it will make them lighter.” A tiny smile flits across Amalie’s lips. “You see? I told you I would understand.”

She stretches out beside Sirris, facing her.

“You can think about that when you’ve rested. I’m going to hold you while you fall asleep, ma’am - is that all right?”

To her own dull amazement, Sirris nods. She wants to be held. She is still shaking and she is going to come apart if no one keeps her together.

Amalie puts her arms around Sirris and presses herself close so their foreheads almost touch. Sirris finds herself nestling closer. She has never been so near to another human being, and suddenly she needs it like breath. Her thoughts become simple and instinctive. Amalie is warm. Amalie is strong. This is good.

“Go to sleep,” Amalie whispers. “I’ve got you.”

“I can’t stop shaking.”

“You will soon.”

Sirris puts her cheek to Amalie’s neck. When she wakes she will have to survey the mess she has made of herself and pick up whatever remains. For now she will listen to her junior’s heartbeat.

On the edge of unconsciousness, she hears the humanity-Hodrick disperse with a soft whoosh.

~~~

Friede’s despair changes shape. 

At first it is all-consuming, numbing, like icy water. She can do nothing but sink. For some time she sits against the wall of the Darkmoon barracks and watches without seeing while the young knights go about their affairs around her. Their conversations are underwater blurs. Their stares do not touch her. If she eats what she is given, she does not remember it. The clothes Elisabeth brought her sit in a neat pile, mocking her with kindness.

Eventually, something in her mind decides it has had enough of drowning. A tiny light, born in the deep place inside her where her blackflame lives, begins pushing back at her misery. It is unconscious, instinctive. It tells her what all Unkindled must learn if they are to survive: that to sit still for too long is to invite ruin.

The despair becomes a shadow at her heels, and instinct compels her to do things to keep it at bay. Rake her hair into a ponytail. Eat a few bites of food. Learn the names and faces of her Darkmoon guards. Anything to remain a person rather than an empty shell. To avoid thinking about Yorshka and Ariandel and all the things she cannot change.

If anything frightens Friede more than fire, it is loss of control.

It takes her a while to put on the fresh clothes. When she does, it is not because she wants or deserves Elisabeth’s generosity, but because she is lucid enough that the stiff, itchy scraps of her dress have become intolerable. The two Darkmoon Knights standing guard turn away while she changes clothes. They’ve seen enough to know that Friede isn’t going to strangle them with her prayer beads while they aren’t looking.

The borrowed dress she chooses from the pile fits her well. The fabric is simple but comfortable, and it’s clean. Friede is unprepared for how much it helps. For the first time since Ariandel’s flame raised her from a pool of her own blood, she feels human.

The Darkmoon Knights are visibly relieved as well. Friede cannot blame them. She must have reeked of iron. 

Friede knows she is an unwelcome guest. Her guards tolerate her presence only because Yorshka asked for clemency, and Friede tolerates them in turn because she has nowhere else to go. In time, however, she realizes these are not the agents of holy vengeance she expected. Their conduct is neither sanctimonious nor cold. When they think Friede is asleep, they review local gossip and whisper about the people they fancy. Some of them speak with commonborn accents. A few have homemade talismans of which the Way of White would very much have disapproved hanging from their bedposts. And they are all so young. Friede wonders about that most of all. The complete absence of more experienced knights speaks to a past disaster. Something punched a hole through Irithyll and took the city’s finest warriors with it, leaving this ragtag bunch of near-children to fill the breach.

Friede has every opportunity to prove herself the monster these young people are quite right to think she is. Instead, the day the silvery knight named Cecily finds the darkmoon pendant he wears under his uniform tangled in knots, Friede holds out her hand for it. She has always had deft fingers. She welcomes the task. It gives her something to do with her hands and her mind, and it keeps her from thinking about all she has lost. And when she has untied the last of the knots, she looks up to find her watchers regarding her as if she might not be heartless after all.

She does not know who spreads word that she isn’t utterly inhuman, but someone does, because Dunstan comes to see her that night. Friede has not set eyes on him since he brought her to the Darkmoon barracks. They are both tense in each other’s presence, he shifting from foot to foot, she reaching for weapons that are not there.

“If you’re going to be staying here for a while,” he says, “you’re going to make yourself useful.”

Friede regards him for a moment, wondering if Elisabeth sent him here. She is surprised he hasn’t dragged her up by the arm yet. Several responses crackle at the tip of her tongue, all of them sharp: Is it customary in Irithyll to extract labor from prisoners? I should expect little else of a city ruled by a god.

She does not say those things. Be it forced labor or simply earning her keep, Friede is in no position to turn her nose up at work. The longer she sits in the barracks, the harder it is to repel the shadow trying to swallow her.

So she gets to her feet, stretching her stiff limbs, and gestures at the door. “Lead me, Unkindled.”

Now that her mind is clearer, Friede’s first impression upon leaving the barracks is that the Age of Dark isn’t as dark as she thought it would be. When she and her sisters preached Kaathe’s word, they described a darkness akin to the Abyss, black and barren and calm. That is not what lies before Friede now. The residents of Irithyll have adorned every inch of their home with glowing plants and stones, just as Yorshka described. Beyond the city walls, nature has grown its own lamps. Amidst the lightless boreal pines stand Dark-born trees, strange of form and luminous of leaf. Some are broad-leafed with veins of light, others stony with canopies shaped like vast mushroom caps. Glowing spores drift down like snow. Huge dragonflies flit amidst it all, carrying light in their abdomens. It is a bizarre, beautiful scene.

Friede closes her eyes. Standing here in the woods, with her boots in the snow and cold air in her lungs, she could almost be back in…

Her breath catches. Dunstan hears it and nudges her arm. “What’s the matter?”

“I did not suppose Dark would be so…”

“Lively?” Dunstan offers. “Surprised us too. There’s more to eat out here than you might expect, once Siegward’s had his way with it. He’s Lin and Yorshka’s cook…and a friend of mine. Dark knows why.”

Dunstan leads Friede to a clearing of the stony trees, which shelter the ground so well that it is only lightly dusted with snow. Beneath one such tree is a man with a broad, merry face and bushy mustache. He is plucking mushrooms from the tree’s base with practiced hands. Friede assumes this is Siegward.

“We use lots of these mushrooms in our food,” Dunstan says. “Siegward could use some help picking them.”

He shakes his head at the man beneath the trees and stalks off.

Siegward looks up at the sound of his name. “You must be Lady Friede. My Unkindled friend told me you might be willing to lend me your hands.”

“Did he.” Friede doubts Dunstan was quite so polite in his phrasing.

Siegward considers her for a long time, humming to himself, eyes sparkling in the dark. “Hmm… You do not seem the sort who would harm Lady Yorshka out of malice.”

Friede can only stare. “Do I not?”

“No, I daresay not.”

“I sought to kill thy companion.”

“As did Master Gwyndolin, long ages ago. Now they are closer than kin.”

Friede hears the unspoken implication. “Cherish no hope for my redemption, sir. I want it not.”

It is then that a dry rustling noise breaks the forest stillness. Before Friede knows what is happening, a paper bird has fluttered down into her hands.

“Mm. It appears you have a letter,” Siegward says.

Friede examines the bird: the precise folds, the elegant spellcraft permeating the parchment. This is fine work. No one would go to such trouble to contact her.

“This is a mistake. I am a stranger in these lands,” she says. She holds the bird out to Siegward. “Surely ’tis for thee.”

“I’ve never known those birds to make mistakes, my lady.”

Without another word, Siegward returns to his foraging, humming a little song as if he and Friede are friends so old they have no need for speech.

At a loss for what else to do, Friede unfolds the bird. Inside are several paragraphs of the neatest handwriting she has ever seen:

Lady Friede,
 
I write to you at the behest of Lady Yorshka, who is convalescing under my care. I must tell you I think this letter unwise, but as I can see Lady Yorshka will have no peace until she knows your fate, I have chosen to honor her request. She has asked me to convey her hopes that you are safe and unharmed.

Lady Yorshka insisted with great urgency that you did not intend to strike her. She understands you did intend to strike her beloved brother, and she believes you would not have done so had you seen any alternative. It is not my place to convince her otherwise. She was wounded, not I. Forgiveness is hers to extend or deny.

She wishes you to know that she does not think you a monster. On the contrary, she asked me to remind you that she sees a great deal of her brother in you - it appears she has told you this before. For reasons she will not reveal to me, she wishes to know you better. She hopes you may speak in person when she is stronger. 

I have grave misgivings as to this course of action. I must think of Lady Yorshka’s safety. However, as her healer, I must also consider her well-being. It is plain she is concerned for you, though she is as yet scarcely conscious. I will thus reserve my judgment as to whether you may see her when she is recovered.

In the meanwhile, I believe she would welcome some word from you. Take care what you say, and know that I will read whatever you choose to write ere I deliver it to her.

If you are not heartless, as Lady Yorshka so sincerely claims, it will ease you to know that she will live. She will not lose her left arm. You dealt her a clean wound: that alone I grant you.

I am, by the Crucible’s holy currents,

Lord Miquella of Crimson Gold

Friede’s breathing has quickened by the time she finishes the letter. The shadow of all her most wretched feelings is closing in on her, mouth open wide. Everything she has tried not to think about since she left Ariandel is laid out before her, and she has no choice but to look at it. Pressure begins to build inside her as she dissects the letter’s contents. Yorshka is fighting for her life, likely unable to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and she used those few minutes to send word to the woman who wounded her. When her thoughts ought to be for herself and her recovery, she is thinking of Friede instead.

The world tilts under her. “Foolish girl,” she mutters, grasping for the coldness she knows so well because that is all she has left. “Foolish, childish girl, thy strength is wasted…”

Siegward’s humming stops. “Are you quite well?”

Friede whirls on him. She wishes he would rage at her, fight her, do anything that makes sense. She cannot bear any more gentleness.

“And thou’rt a fool as well! I am not a lady to be treated with courtesy. I am not a lost soul to be shepherded. I am not lonely Dark Sun Gwyndolin, to be warmed and healed by Yorshka’s kindness. I am the witch who ensnared Father Ariandel and stole the painting’s flame, and I will not repent of it. ’Twas no grand tragedy that drove me to it. I cannot abide fire - that is all. She is wrong, hearest thou? Yorshka is wrong!”

She is hardly aware of her own words. She thought all her feeling burned out of her long ago. What is happening to her? Who is she, what is she, why is she?

Siegward looks at her steadily. “That may be. Nonetheless, you have two good hands. Come put them to use.”

Friede bites down on the sound rising in her throat, an inhuman sound like Father Ariandel’s scream. The absurdity of it all is too much. She, Elfriede of the Sable Church, picking mushrooms with a friend of the man she nearly killed!

With as much dignity as she can muster, she lowers herself down at the base of Siegward’s tree and splays her palms hard against the cold earth. When that does not stop the shudders rippling through her, she drops from her knees onto her side and sinks her hands into fistfuls of dirt. 

There, with her body pressed to the ground, she waits to stop falling.

Chapter Text

He is wandering. 

The great dead dragon on the walls, whom the soldiers name Gransax, is his anchor. He focuses on it, repeating dragon-seeker's meditations  - Make me stone, make me steel, make me stand amidst the storm - to occupy his conscious mind and leave the rest of him open. Then he waits for the memories. 

More than anything, he hopes that white-robed figure will drift across the background of his mind.

Gwyndolin. Lin. His brother.

Sometimes, when the sun catches Gransax’s spear, the glare seems to slip past all the walls he has built for himself and illuminate what lies within. 

Silvery eyes, too old and sad for the little face that holds them.

Scales, snakes, cool weight on his shoulders and chest.

Tears becoming laughter.

A ribbon slipping from silver hair.

And a ring that sets anger smoldering in his gut.

Fragments, nothing more. Pieces. That is all he can extract. He never learns why he was there that day with his brother laughing on his shoulders, what they were doing, what happened before or after. He does not even know if this memory is important. Still, it’s a place to start. If he can draw this one memory out from behind his fortress walls, the rest may come easier and easier until at last he remembers how to open his own gates. 

The golden one - Miquella - suggested Gywndolin would be able to help him, but he is reluctant. He does not want to be a burden to the brother he has not seen in ages, nor does he want to meet Gwyndolin as a husk of himself. He still has enough of his father’s pride in him to recognize what he has become and despise it.

Ah, there’s a new piece: his father was proud. Likely stubborn as well.

Sometimes it happens like that: he remembers things in passing. One thought catches another by chance and pulls a fragment through the bars. It’s never much, but he will take what he can get and not let it go. Did he learn that from his father too?

The dragon-born called Morgott sits with him sometimes, both of them cross-legged and silent beneath Gransax’s stone gaze. Morgott is a solid, reassuring presence. Sitting beside him is almost like being back on the peak, with dragon-seekers all around and the remains of an ancient creature before him. The strangeness of the past few days diminishes. Leyndell becomes less foreign, almost recognizable. 

That familiarity eases his mind and tempts his memories forth. Lacy gloves, tiny hands in his hands, tiny legs on his shoulders, outspread arms, running, laughing…

He senses fire in Morgott. The Omen does not often speak with words, but that flame tells its own tale. It leaps with hope, stutters with hurt, burns bright and steady with pride. Today it is troubled, guttering like a candle in the wind or hurling itself against its vessel in flares of frustration.

“I did not wish this,” Morgott rumbles, low and half-aware. “I forbade her to engage with her enemies. She heeded me not. I sought to keep her safe and led her instead into harm.”

The Omen does not say who “she” is. He just offers his confession to the great dead dragon and settles back into silence.

The quiet does not last long. The young woman with the red lightning, Eira, is on the wall today, and she is not shy about speaking.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she tells Morgott. “It’s no one’s fault. You just said as much: you told Yorshka not to try to parry, and she did it anyway because she wanted to save Lin.”

“I sowed the seeds, Tarnished.”

“It was because of you she kept her head. She worked a heal to slow her bleeding; did Ursa tell you that? She gave herself a chance to live because you taught her to stay calm. So don’t you dare blame yourself, Morgott.”

Morgott does not reply, but the flame inside him steadies.

Another new piece: there is a flame inside him too. Or there was. Perhaps there still is.

Now that Eira has broken the silence, she cannot stop. “Yorshka is Lin’s sister,” she goes on. She is speaking for his benefit now, as she has done before, sprinkling drops of information to see what grows. “Not by blood - she was born in the painted world of Ariamis. You never met her. She ran away to Anor Londo when her mother was killed, and Lin raised her as his own. He adores her. But Lin was in a battle not long ago, and Yorshka got hurt trying to protect him. That’s why we can’t tell him you’re here yet. Lin is awfully upset. Miquella thinks it would be too much to bear if he looked at you and you didn’t know him.”

He knows those names. Ariamis was a dark place, a place of shame, and Anor Londo…

A cluster of fragments: gold, light, white, fire, important.

He should recognize Anor Londo. That was where he held his brother on his shoulders, wasn’t it? That was home. But if that’s true, why did he fly so far away and leave the little one in white alone and vulnerable? Although he knows almost nothing about himself, he wants to believe he was the sort of person who would defend the vulnerable if he could.

He reaches out for that belief, for something solid to grasp. As usual, he collides with a barricade deep inside him. The bits of clarity he has managed to regain scatter into mist.

His meditative trance breaks, and he slams his fist down on the warm stones. He is so close! His self lies just beneath his fingertips and he cannot touch it! If Miquella is right and it is his own protective measures sealing his past away, why can he not unlock it on his own? Has he fallen so far that he no longer commands his own mind? He is little better than a hollow.

Eira’s small fingers come to rest on his arm. He almost jerks away. In the world of the peak, touch was synonymous with violence.

Eira withdraws her hand at once. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. It’s my way. Sometimes I forget it isn’t yours.”

He forces himself to uncurl his fists. Calm thyself. Thou’rt not among enemies.

“In truth I know not what my way may be,” he says. For once the words don’t fall away into growls of vexation. Speech is growing easier: that’s something.

“You will,” Eira says. 

The faith in those two words disarms him. He has never met someone so certain and hopeful. There is a depth to this woman’s optimism. It has roots in some private store of surety that needs no external sustenance. It must have been this that drove Eira to shatter his storm and send them both plummeting into the sky. She believed they would not die, enough to stake both their lives on it.

He wants to believe too. He wishes he could see himself with Eira’s bright, confident eyes.

“Is Gransax helping your memories come back?” she asks.

He considers the great dragon’s bronze spear, now casting a sharp-edged shadow on him. “The sun on the spear…”

“It clears your mind?”

“Aye.”

“Why is that?”

“I…” How to explain the way those flashes of light on metal seem to illuminate the things he has hidden from himself? “I know it.”

“It reminds you of something familiar?”

Sun on metal, light and gold. Those were the sights of his youth, sights he knew from birth. “’Tis home,” he says, thinking aloud. “Anor Londo. ’Tis the lightning in mine hands, in m-my father’s hands…”

Here his mind slips away from him again. The shutters bang closed.

Exasperated, he runs his hands through his mane of hair, shaking his head as if by doing so some critical piece of information might fall into his lap.

“It’s all right,” Eira says, undeterred. “You’re right, you know: your father did use lightning magic.” 

She cocks her head at him. There is a warmth and curiosity in her face that he has seen before - on his sister, perhaps? He cannot recall what she looked like beyond her gentle brown eyes.

“Your memories come back when you see things that remind you of home,” Eira goes on. “Do you think lightning might help? It must have been all around you when you were growing up. You used it, your father used it. I’m sure his soldiers did too.”

“I wielded lightning in many battles on the peak. It did not restore me to myself.”

“You’re not on the peak now. You’re somewhere you don’t know at all. Maybe the change will do you good - shake something loose.”

“What is thine intent?” He is willing to try anything, and besides that, he wants to see more of Eira’s lightning. He can observe it properly now that she isn’t his opponent.

Eira toys with the hilt of Gransax’s bolt, which is resting on the ramparts between them. “I think we should go to the colosseum.”

Morgott opens his amber eye. “Tarnished…”

“I know, Miquella said I’m not supposed to go there until my ribs are better, but I’m not going to fight. I’m just going to throw some lightning bolts.”

“On thine head be it.” And the Omen returns to his meditation with the air of one who knows better than to argue.

Eira stands up, one hand pressed to her injured side, and extends the other hand to him. Her eyes, brown ringed with gold, are sun-warm. Was he ever young and fearless like her? He must have been, although fearlessness seems very far away at present. It is difficult to be bold when one does not know oneself.

He takes Eira’s hand and gets to his feet, holding her forearm in a warrior’s grip.

“Lead me.”

~~~

When Gwyndolin wakes, the first thing he sees is his sister’s face. For a moment he does not know where he is or why Yorshka’s eyes are half-lidded and groggy. Then he glimpses Yorshka’s left shoulder, bandaged beneath her nightdress and bound in a sling. All lethargy vanishes in an instant. He blinks and his hands turn red with Yorshka’s blood.

Gwyndolin pushes himself up as Yorshka reaches out to him, assessing her face (peaceful) and her color (not so pallid now). He concludes she looks better. Only then does he realize he isn’t breathing.

From behind him, Ursa puts her hand on in his shoulder. “She’s all right, love. Just a bit drowsy from the perfume.”

Gwyndolin blinks again. There is no blood on his palms.

He catches hold of Yorshka’s hand as it falls back towards the bedclothes. “Dearest one? How farest thou?”

Yorshka smiles a slow, sleepy smile. “Warm.”

There is no unsettling prescience in that word, no prophecy. Just Yorshka.

For the first time since setting foot in Ariandel, Gwyndolin takes a full breath. “I am glad,” he says past the lump in his throat. “Be warm.”

“Thou also.” Yorshka releases Gwyndolin’s hand and nudges the shawl pooled on the bed beside her - his shawl.

“Dunstan brought it from Irithyll,” Ursa says before Gwyndolin can ask for an explanation. “He thought it might comfort you both to have something from home.”

Warmth spreads through Gwyndolin’s body and takes with it the rest of his capacity for speech. Even after all this time, it is still miraculous to know that people are thinking about him - and Dunstan, no less. Tenderness does not come easily to the Unkindled.

“He was worried about you,” Ursa says.

“So I see. I must send him word that all will be well.”

Yorshka touches the shawl again. “Be warm.”

Gwyndolin cannot argue with such sweetness. He sweeps the shawl around his shoulders, nestling into the familiar silk. Despite the morning sun flooding through the window, he feels rather chilly.

Ursa watches him wrap himself up. For one heartbeat, her eyes narrow. Then she is moving around the bed, all brisk efficiency once more, and feeling Yorshka’s brow with the back of her hand.

“No sign of fever,” the perfumer says. “Once you’ve woken up a bit, you ought to walk.”

Yorshka’s forehead creases. “Walk?”

“Aye, or you won’t heal properly. No good comes of lying flat on your back. You need to stand up as soon as you can. Just a few steps will help. That’s how your brother started.”

Oh, Gwyndolin remembers. At one time he was convinced that a few steps were all he would ever be able to take, and he would spend the rest of his life trying to to reach the end of the corridor outside the infirmary.

“But you won’t have so hard a time of it,” Ursa continues. “There’s nothing wrong with your legs. You’re not learning to walk without snakes holding you up. We just need to get you on your feet for a bit. Can you do that, love?”

Yorshka looks up at Gwyndolin and nods. “I will try.”

“I shall walk beside thee,” Gwyndolin says. 

Only when Ursa gives him a disapproving look does he remember his sprained ankle. He had quite forgotten about that.

“You will not,” says the perfumer. “If I know you at all, I’d wager you’ve already gone tramping all over Ariandel on that ankle. I won’t have you doing any more harm. Miquella will see to it when he comes.”

“But Eira -”

“Eira can stitch a wound if she sits still long enough, but she’s no healer. Let Miquella see to you. He wants to give you a proper looking over, and you’ll be wasting your breath trying to stop him.”

Gwyndolin concedes in silence. There is no will on earth quite like Miquella’s.

He sits with Yorshka for a time, stroking her hair and watching her shake off the perfume that helped her sleep. He finds himself counting her breaths like prayer beads. Years ago, when he freed Yorshka from her tower and held her for the first time in months, he thought nothing could be more sacred than the soft sound of her breathing, not even Fire. He thinks the same now.

Did his father ever think that about him?

That reminds him: he must not make Gwyn’s mistakes.

“Thou’rt changed of late,” he says. “In thy deeds in Ariandel I see mine own dear sister, yes, but I see another also, a woman I do not yet know. I wish to know her. I wish to know thee as thou art. When thou’rt stronger, wilt thou speak with me a while?”

How he wishes Gwyn had said these things to him.

Yorshka seems to understand this. She squeezes Gwyndolin’s hand with what little strength she has recovered. “Thou knowest me always.”

He doesn’t. The person who ran off to change Friede’s heart is still recognizably Yorshka, full of innocent compassion. But she is Yorshka in a chrysalis, Yorshka becoming someone else, someone greater. And Gwyndolin is standing in the way of that transformation. He is doing so out of a desire to protect her, yes, but his father made the same argument each time he pushed Gwyndolin into the shadows.

Thou’rt not to return to the training yard. Thou wilt harm thyself belike.

‘Twere better thou didst not attend the ball, little one. My court will not look kindly upon thee. They are apt to stare.

Always “little one” or “child”, even when Gwyndolin was grown, and absolutely never “my son.”

Perhaps he is being too hard on himself. He has never diminished Yorshka like that, and he has good reason to be protective of her. There are real dangers in this world and in Ariandel, dangers far more pressing than gossiping courtiers.

He does not know how to say any of this, and Yorshka is in no state to hear it. It’s taking all her concentration to keep her eyes focused on Gwyndolin’s face. Her eyelids droop every few seconds and and she has to shake herself to regain clarity.

When Yorshka is awake enough, Ursa helps her through the painstaking process of getting out of bed and finding her feet. Gwyndolin knows just how his poor sister feels, standing there in her nightdress, swaying and panting with the effort of staying upright. He is almost relieved when Ursa leads her out into the corridor. He cannot bear to see Yorshka struggle so.

Miquella comes for him not long afterward, looking, as always, like he’s just had the best sleep of his life. His eyes are bright, his golden hair a perfectly imperfect spill down his back. The freshness of him is almost overwhelming.

“Your rest has done you good,” he says. Without waiting for a response, he kneels and takes Gwyndolin’s wounded ankle between his hands. “You must pardon me. I do not trust my consort’s assessments.”

Miquella spends an agonizing minute turning Gwyndolin’s ankle this way and that, frowning at Gwyndolin’s hissing breaths of pain. When he is satisfied it isn’t broken, he changes the dressing on the wound Friede’s frost magic made. The water in the bathing pool was indeed cleansing, as Eira said: the wound is only pink, not red.

Miquella rocks back on his heels to survey his work. “I could cast a heal to ease the swelling, but that may not be wise. ’Twill encourage you to walk ere you ought and worsen your injury.” 

Gwyndolin scoffs. “Think’st thou I am of a mind to wander Leyndell and dance until dusk?”

“Of course not, yet I know you are not content to be still for long.”

“I wish to walk beside my sister. Grant me healing enough for that. I ask no more.”

Miquella holds his gaze a moment. Gwyndolin had forgotten how intimidating it is to sit beneath those keen eyes.

“Very well, but you must promise me you will make use of a crutch if you wish to walk any further than the bathing pool.”

“I am not an invalid.”

“Nay, you are not. That is the trouble.” 

Then Miquella’s face softens. His right hand glows gold, and he puts it on Gwyndolin’s ankle. Warmth wells from beneath his palm and trickles out through Gwyndolin’s toes. When the glow fades, Gwyndolin flexes his ankle cautiously and finds he can move it with no more than a dull soreness.

“’Twill be worse when you place your weight upon it. Take care,” Miquella warns.

“I thank thee,” Gwyndolin says, more grateful for Miquella’s understanding than he can express.

“Were Malenia in Yorshka’s place, no wound would keep me from her side.” Gwyndolin glimpses a shadow falling across Miquella’s face before he is once again the capable healer. “Now, are you wounded in any other way?”

Gwyndolin is about to say no - he is eager to join Yorshka in the corridor - when he remembers what happened in Ariandel’s library, when Vilhelm sealed his magic. He clung to Dunstan’s arm while the panic abated, and when he could breathe again, Dunstan said, It took you too long to catch your breath. And then there were the Unkindled’s many other comments about how slowly Gwyndolin’s heart beats while he sleeps.

Gwyndolin did promise to see a healer about this, didn’t he?

He sighs. “Dunstan is concerned for mine heart.”

He says this as if Dunstan had suggested the sun rises in the west. He expects Miquella to offer him a knowing smile. They both know how the Unkindled fusses, don’t they?

On the contrary, the god’s face remains attentive. Not worried, not yet, but alert. “Your heart has been weak since birth.”

“‘Tis so.”

“When first Eira brought you to us, we took notice of a murmur in your chest. We suspected you had had it all your life. At that time we saw no need to intervene.”

“The healers of Anor Londo feared this...irregularity might strike me dead in my cradle, yet it did not. Why should it trouble me now?”

“You were close to death when you escaped captivity. Such grave illness often leaves scars. The cold and darkness of your home may have weakened you as well. And you are - forgive me - of a very great age.”

Gwyndolin’s mouth opens in disbelief. “How dare -”

“As your healer, I must speak the truth. I mean you no insult. Now tell me, what is Dunstan’s precise concern?”

Gwyndolin huffs, folding his arms. “I breathe but slowly in sleep, sayeth he. Is it not so for every living thing?”

He hopes this will be the moment when Miquella smiles and says Dunstan is overreacting.

The god’s eyes only darken. “’Tis so - within reason. I must observe you myself to be certain.”

“Thou’rt not serious.”

“I fear I am. The heart is not to be trifled with. I trust you have felt no pains in your chest.”

“Certainly not.”

“Have you found yourself unusually short of breath of late?”

“The Unkindled might say so. I would not.”

“Have you felt chilled?”

“I -” Gwyndolin stops short, looking down at the shawl wrapped around him. When he looks back up, Miquella’s keen eyes are set on his face. “’Tis difficult to say. I dwell in a cold land. I am often cold myself.”

“You are not in a cold land now.”


“Is it so strange I should wish the comfort of familiar garments at such a time as this?” Gwyndolin snaps, half indignant, half uneasy. “This shawl is no ill omen. Prithee heed me, Miquella. The Unkindled is known to fret without cause.”

Miquella is impassive. “You gave him cause enough when he found you collapsed in the street, chilled half to death because you went to battle with the dregs of Deep in silk.”

“He told thee -” Shame and anger choke Gwyndolin’s voice. He has half a mind to push himself off the edge of the bed and go to confront Dunstan. “When?”

“Oh, many months ago, at some gathering or other.”

“He had no right!”

“It troubles him to see you neglect your health.”

“I endured ages alone. I need not his aid.”

Even before Miquella levels him with a disappointed stare, Gwyndolin knows he has gone too far. He regrets the words as soon as they are out of his mouth.

“You speak in fear. You do not mean what you say,” Miquella says.

Gwyndolin pulls his shawl tighter, defensive and ashamed. “Nay, I do not.”

“He has been a good companion to you, at the kiln and after. You once told me you might have starved had he and Siegward not coaxed you to eat the foods of Dark.”

“’Tis true.” 

And Dunstan has looked after Gwyndolin in a thousand ways since then: a reassuring conversation, a cloak around his shoulders, and yes, a pair of arms to carry him home when he is too cold to walk.

Miquella takes Gwyndolin’s shoulders in hand. “I know you cannot bear to be treated like a doll. I understand. But really, we are not your enemies. We do not deem you too frail to go out of doors, as your father did. Quite the opposite: we wish you to live well and deeply. So do not scorn us. Permit us to care for you.”

Miquella is a powerful speaker - so powerful, Eira says, that he can capture the hearts of his listeners when he so wishes. Gwyndolin senses no magical influence now, however. There is nothing but worry in the god’s golden eyes, unveiled and simple. This more than anything convinces Gwyndolin to relent. However aggravating it may be, it is a gift to be the recipient of another’s concern. He reminds himself what he thought not an hour ago, when he learned Dunstan had brought him his favorite shawl: miraculous.

He wraps his hands around Miquella’s wrists, a gesture of reconciliation. “Very well. What must I do?”

“Sleep, eat, drink, and for goodness’ sake, dress properly for the cold.” Miquella’s grin fades a little. “And allow me to listen to your heart.”

So Gwyndolin sits on the edge of the bed and tries not to flinch away from the cold instrument Miquella presses to his chest. The god is silent while he listens at the narrow end of the little brass cone and moves it to several different places. Gwyndolin begins to worry something is indeed falling apart within him. He’ll never be able to look Dunstan in the eyes again once the Unkindled finds out he was right. 

“I hear nothing alarming at present,” Miquella says when at last he lifts his head. “That does not mean you are well. We must keep a careful watch. When you return home, I would advise you to visit Leyndell regularly so I may make assessments.”

“If I must.”

“And should your condition worsen, you must come to me at once.”

Gwyndolin does not like the word “condition.” He heard it too often as a child confined to bed with strange fevers and coughs. He does not want to be thought of as someone with a condition.

Miquella must sense something of these thoughts, because he says without preamble, “It might cheer you to know that Eira and Morgott found your brother.”

Gwyndolin’s heart stutters so hard that he wonders whether he should be worried about it after all. “He…liveth still?”

“Oh, yes.”

Gwyndolin smooths his clothes and hair, as if Gwynhael might walk through the door at any moment. He is suddenly conscious that he has neither looked in a mirror nor taken a proper bath since he left for Ariandel. Gwynhael never cared much for appearances, but Gwyndolin does. He does not want his long-lost brother to see him looking like he just got out of bed. 

“Is he here? May I see him?” he asks.

“Not yet, I’m afraid. Gwynhael had some unfinished business on Archdragon Peak. He was delayed.”

“But he will come?”

“He will come to Leyndell, yes.”

“When?”

“When he is ready. Soon, I hope.”

Gwyndolin’s breath is coming fast with anticipation, his thoughts racing. What will he and Gwynhael say to each other? Will they recognize one another? It is too much to hope that nothing will have changed between them, but they can still begin afresh, come to know each other’s new selves. The prospect is both daunting and wonderful. He can hardly believe it is real.

Father, now we mend.

The thought bursts across Gwyndolin’s mind, trailing sparks of defiance. Once, it would have ended in a question mark, a request for Gwyn’s approval. Now the question has become a declaration. Gwyndolin sought this reunion of his own will, and the people who love him made it possible. There is such wondrous freedom in that.

“He is not wounded?” he asks. 

“Nay…not in the usual sense.”

That brings Gwyndolin up short. His bright hope fades a little. Only now does he notice Miquella plaiting two strands of hair together. A distracted motion. Unsettled. How long has he been doing that?

“Is aught amiss?” Gwyndolin asks.

Miquella’s hand drops into his lap. He smiles his serene smile.

“‘Twill do him good to see you.”

~~~

Leyndell’s colosseum is familiar. The sandy floor, the high stone tiers, the training dummies scattered around the perimeter - all are known to him. He must have been somewhere like this before, a training yard in Anor Londo or an arena in some human city whose name has been lost to history. He breathes deep the smells of dust and sweat, and his body responds. The frustration of the past few days drains out of him. He rolls his shoulders, shakes out his legs, allows himself to feel at home. If he can unlock his memories anywhere, this is the place.

Eira plants Gransax’s bolt in the middle of the arena, point stuck in the sand. Then she backs away, giving herself plenty of space, and gestures for him to do the same. A talisman is dangling from a chain in her left hand. It looks to be a stony dragon scale.

“Keep clear,” she calls to him from the opposite side of the arena. “Are you ready?”

He summons forth the one clear image he has managed to preserve - little Gwyndolin on his shoulders - and holds it tight. 

Make straight my path, light of the heavens.

He gives Eira a nod.

She lifts her left hand. “Let’s see if I can light the way for you.”

And with that, a golden bolt bursts into her hand.

Despite himself, he smiles. This woman is not one for niceties. He appreciates that.

Eira draws back her arm and flings her lightning spear at Gransax’s bolt. The miracle (is that what it is called in this land?) hits the weapon and shoots down its length and into the sand. The crack echoes around the colosseum, rebounding off the stone walls. Stray sparks trail away upon the breeze.

Nothing happens. No doors open; no walls crumble.

Eira shrugs at him. “It was just a thought. We’ll think of something else.”

Then all at once, the sparks catch on something in his mind. For a few seconds they are not sparks but dust motes glittering in sunlight. That is all he sees before his own gates close on him, but it’s enough to convince him not to give up.

Eira must have seen something change in his posture. She stops scuffing at the dirt with her boots, and her face lights up. “Is it working?”

“It…may be.”

That is all the confirmation Eira needs. She lifts her fist to the gold-tinged clouds, and another bolt sears down from above, bright white at its heart, to shatter on Gransax’s bolt. 

In his mind that white flash becomes high windows, brilliant with sunshine. It becomes a door in a hallway, white trimmed with gold. 

His breathing quickens. He dares not hope that he is at last filling in the picture.

“Again,” he calls out.

Eira brings a third bolt crashing down on her spear. This time the flash is not a door, but a little person in white robes crouched outside it. Listening?

He is getting closer. He needs more illumination. Then he may be able to drag this memory from behind his walls at last.

He does not need to tell Eira what he wants; the two of them speak the same silent language. Her next miracle is bigger, sizzling across the ground until it hits the spear. In that snapping sound he hears words, overlapping voices. Sullen and brooding …heart failed at birth.

A dull burning awakens inside him. He does not need the lightning to tell him what it is; he knows it like his own hands.

Anger. It is so strong it is bleeding past the ramparts he erected around his soul.

He welcomes it like an old friend. It has always been his readiest emotion, and he needs it now, to tear through his idleness and make him decisive.


Across the sand, Eira is dancing from foot to foot. “More?”

He seizes on the dragon-breath of fury rising inside him. “The most.”

Eira bares her teeth in a fierce grin and opens her arms.

Wind surges through the colosseum, raising whirls of sand. Then the sky splits open with a mighty roar, and red lightning spears rain down. Only a few of the blazing bolts hit the weapon in the arena’s center and dissipate; the rest drive into the sand and leave smoking black pits behind.

Amidst this torrent of wrath, he stands unafraid. It is so very beautiful. 

Sparks bite along his skin. The echoing crashes drown out all other sounds, shake the foundations of his inner walls. It is his own rage magnified and made manifest.

The storm blows his age-old defenses apart and he can see.

Little Gwyndolin is kneeling by that closed door. The nobles inside are having a meeting - or they should be. Their talk has turned to gossip, and the gossip is about Gwyndolin. How solemn and strange she is, they say, with her serpents and moon magic and frail body. What place is there in Anor Londo for such a child? She will always be an outcast, an aberration. She can wear her ring all she likes; still Lord Gwyn will not be able to understand her. He will not truly love her. It would have been kinder had her heart failed her at birth.

Tears are streaking down Gwyndolin’s face. His tiny body is shaking. 

Gwynhael - he is still Gwynhael here - is furious. How dare these people say such things about a child? His fingers are on the door handle, ready to wrench it open and fight every one of the nobles with his bare hands. He’ll win, too. He won’t even have to try.

With a great effort, he concedes it would be better to deal with them later. If it comes to a duel, he does not want his brother to see. Gwyndolin cannot stand any sort of conflict. Even raised voices can bring him to tears.

So Gwynhael says, “Pay them no heed, little dragon. Thou shalt be greater than they.”

He sweeps his little brother onto his shoulders and spreads his arms, making his own wings. He becomes Gwyndolin’s dragon. He runs down the corridor until his brother’s hiccuping sobs turn to peals of laughter, and soon Gwyndolin is flying too, with his arms flung wide and his mantle billowing around him.

The echoes fade, and with them the memory. He returns to the present with his ears ringing and his fists clenched. The vision is gone, but the anger remains. With it comes a deeper, sweeter feeling. Uprooted and isolated though it is, it is clear.

Eira has tilted her head back to let the sparks land on her cheeks. When she looks at him, her face is exultant. “I’ll teach you that one if you want,” she says. And then, sobering, “Did you see something?”

He lets his hands fall open. The anger has served its purpose; he will let it go for now. 

“I loved him,” he says.

He loved his brother. For the first time in ages, he knows this with his own mind. It is not merely a fact Eira told him about himself; it is a truth he can feel alongside his lightning. Innate. Undeniable. His opaque fortress is already reassembling inside him, but he will remember this. It will not slip back behind the gates where he cannot reach it.

Eira crosses the arena and looks intently at him. “You can feel it?”

“Aye.”

“It’s not going away?

“Nay. I have hold of it.”

“Then the rest will come.” Eira is nearly vibrating with hope. “Maybe not all at once, but it will come. You have something that matters now.”

Chapter Text

Friede’s dignity trickles back to her. Drop by drop, she becomes aware that she must look ridiculous, kneeling with her face in the frosty grass and her hands curled in the dirt. She tells herself to let go. She is not going to fall to the center of the earth. Enough of this foolishness.

One finger at a time, her body obeys.

She sits up, dark crescents of dirt under her nails. She is still in the glade. She hasn’t unraveled. Siegward is still here too, at the base of a tree nearby. His soft humming draws her back to the present, to this nonsensical set of circumstances she must now navigate if she is to…what? Survive? Escape? Begin anew? Impossible. Even if she were sure that is what she wants, it’s too late.

But lying here is not a viable choice either. To Friede, both a warrior and an Unkindled, stillness is doubly destructive. She needs an objective, and there are two before her now. The first - responding to the letter sent on Yorshka’s behalf - is too much to contemplate. And as for the second…

She looks at the bushy-browed man beside her. “What appearance have they? These mushrooms thou seek’st?”

“Hm? Oh!” Siegward’s humming stops short. He looks surprised, but not the least bit afraid. “Are you recovered?”
 
Friede answers this inane question with a raised eyebrow and a hard stare.

Her coldness has no effect on Siegward. “Have you decided to assist me after all?” he asks, amiable as ever.

“I must have a task, or I shall run mad.”

“I found myself in Master Gwyndolin’s kitchen for much the same reason. You need not explain further. Now” - Siegward slides a wooden bucket towards Friede - “the varieties I’ve collected here are all useful in cooking. As for the others that grow in this clearing, they are not fit for eating.”

Friede glances into the bucket. All the mushrooms look the same to her: pale and dusted with dirt. “Thou’rt certain thou wishest mine aid? I might slip in a poisonous specimen amidst the rest.”

Siegward just chuckles. “Oh, no danger of that. There are no poisonous mushrooms in this glade. We tested them all when first they began to sprout. We are very careful of that sort of thing, given Master Gwyndolin’s past misfortunes.”

“What might these be?” Yorshka told her a bit of it, but she wants to hear a full account.

“Several years ago, a tyrant came to Irithyll, poisoned Master Gwyndolin, and took control of the city. The good captain was imprisoned in his family’s own cathedral to be fed to a monster, an unwilling Lord of Cinder with a habit of devouring men.”

A fitting end for a god whose flame devoured the world, says one half of Friede’s mind. Too cruel an end for god or human, says the other. 

“And what of Lady Yorshka?” she asks before she can stop herself.

“She was locked in a tower. Its sole point of access was an unseen bridge from Anor Londo. For some time she knew nothing of her brother’s fate. No doubt that was the worst torment the tyrant could have visited upon her.”

Guilt twists in Friede’s gut. Small wonder Yorshka threw herself between Gwyndolin and Friede’s scythes. The thought of losing him again must have been unbearable.

Friede pretends to be comparing the mushrooms growing at the base of the trees to the ones in the bucket so Siegward does not see her eyes. 

“Yet ‘tis plain both brother and sister were saved,” she says. Her voice does not betray her. She is well-trained.

If Siegward notices anything, he goes right on without comment, caught up in his story. “Master Gwyndolin summoned a phantom of sorts, a warrior from another world, blessed with lightning. She fought with him against the devourer and took him to a safe place where he could heal. When he returned to Irithyll, he slew his usurper by his own hand and delivered Lady Yorshka from her prison, along with those of his captive people who still lived.”

“Quite a tale,” Friede says. It explains why all the current Darkmoon Knights are so new to their positions, if nothing else.

Siegward eyes her sidelong. “It was Dunstan who helped Master Gwyndolin take back this city, and Dunstan who went with him to put out the First Flame.”

Friede tries to imagine it: a god and a man fighting side by side in the kiln, amidst the ashes of ages, not to link the fire but to call down the dark. It would be unbelievable did the truth of it not surround her: the pale glowing plants, the darkness so thick she can breathe it.

She supposes being eaten by a cannibal Lord of Cinder would have shaken her convictions too.

Nonetheless, she shrugs off Siegward’s implication. “I have told thee, sir, look for no such change of heart from me. Let the ashen one and the god keep their fellowship. I will seek no part in it.”

“And if they should seek you?”

“They will not. Thou’rt a ridiculous little man.”

“Lady Yorshka has already sought you.”

“She is not her brother. Hers is a gentle heart - too gentle for this world.”

“And she has Master Gwyndolin in the palm of her hand. She could convince him of almost anything.” Siegward raps the bucket with his knuckles. “Now convince me you know which mushrooms belong in there.”

Friede feels herself reeling again. This is a fever dream, it must be; reality would not be so absurd! She looks for some flicker of malice in Siegward’s face, something she can understand. She sees nothing but easy contentment.

“Is this a punishment?” she asks. That would make sense: Dunstan sent her here to debase her. A high-ranking lady of Londor reduced to digging in the dirt. Friede doesn’t consider herself above such labor, but Dunstan might think she does.

Siegward just smiles his infuriating smile. “Not at all. Not unless you believe it so. There is great worth in this work, humble though it is.” 

“Great worth? I am certain thy Master Gwyndolin would not stoop to this.”

“Hmm, but he does. He joins me now and then, when time permits him. I believe he finds it rather relaxing.”

Friede laughs. “For such a life as this the Dark Sun snuffed his father’s flame and shed the glories of godhood?”

“And he is happier for it, too.”

Something inside Friede twinges, ready to snap and kindle guilt to anger. “Thou’rt insufferable.”

“So Dunstan tells me.”

“Art thou deaf to the coldness on my tongue?”

“I hear it well enough, my lady. I also hear that your heart is not in it.”

Friede’s throat closes. First Yorshka, now Siegward! What sorcery do these people wield, to pierce me thus?

She pushes herself up, dusting off her skirts, and goes to the base of a tree nearby. She sinks her hands into the soil and begins to work.

She does not lift her head. She looks at nothing but those clusters of pale mushrooms.

So passes the strangest afternoon Friede has ever known. She and Siegward do not speak. She picks, he picks, and sometimes they get up to drop mushrooms into the bucket between them. The rattling sound they make grows less and less hollow as the bucket fills up. 

They do not, however, work in silence: Siegward hums an unending series of tunes to pass the time. Whether he learned them or made them up himself, Friede does not know. She has never heard any of them before. Ariandel had different songs. There was no music in Londor at all.

Siegward does not encourage her to hum along, but Friede knows the invitation is open all the same. Everything this man does is open. And so, when she is far enough away from Siegward not to make a fool of herself, she hums along, feeling her way through the unfamiliar melodies by instinct. It’s an odd feeling to share something peaceful with a stranger. A good feeling.

Is this not what she went looking for when she left the Sable Church?

As she works, one truth begins to emerge. It is as of yet a small thing, almost smothered by her coldness, fear, and loathing, by the blood she shed for the ends she believed in. Yet the message is plain:

If Friede does not take this chance to learn something beyond violence, she will not get another.

But by the Abyss, she does not know how! She does not even know if this is what she wants!

So she scoops mushrooms out of the ground, and each time she breaks off the caps she tries not to think about how easily she might have broken Yorshka’s little body.

The Fire Keeper, Elisabeth, comes by to help. She works as quickly by feel as Siegward does by sight. Her deft hands remind Friede of her sister. Yuria could see, but she never used her sight to guide her, just her clever fingers. She wore a mask that covered her eyes to prove just how little she needed light. Humans were creatures of the dark by nature, she said: any of their senses could lead them through it, not only their eyes.

Elisabeth is as gentle as Yorshka, and worse, because her gentleness is mature. She is not a wide-eyed child looking for the good in all things. She is a woman grown who saw every sort of depravity, desperation, and decay in the people who passed through her shrine, and she chose nonetheless to be kind. The Fire Keeper knew exactly what she was doing when she brought Friede fresh clothes. She knows what she is doing now, when she says ever so softly, “Thou’rt afeared of fire, sayeth mine husband.”  

Friede looks down at the mushrooms in her lap. Even then, she can feel Elisabeth’s unseeing gaze on her. “Art thou not likewise afeared? Thine hands bear the scars of flame. Thine eyes thou gav’st for thy duty.”

“The flame was my great love. Fire was not always ruinous, see’st thou. ‘Twas transforming and sustaining also. I gave what it required of me. There was pain, aye, but ‘twas a passing thing. I thought it a fair exchange for the honor of serving beside the bonfire.”

If it frightens her to recall her suffering, she does not show it. She snaps the stem from the mushroom in her hands with nary a tremble. And yet, Friede notes Elisabeth’s use of past tense: I thought it a fair exchange.

“An honor, thou sayest, yet thou’rt wed to the man who wished for a world without Fire.”

Elisabeth brushes the dirt from her mushroom cap and tosses it into the bucket with uncanny accuracy. “To be a Fire Keeper is both an honor and a sacrifice, my lady. I delivered myself from both when I took the First Flame in mine hands.”

She rests one palm on her belly as she says this, a casual gesture that is not casual at all.

“Thou’rt with child,” Friede says.

“I am.” Elisabeth’s voice all but glows. “A joy I thought I would never know. Fire Keepers do not marry or bear children. We forsake our names and lineage when we don our black.”

“Bearest thou the flame no grudge for keeping thee from such joys?”

“I will not claim to lament the end of Fire. I have found much happiness in its absence.”

“And when the flame alighteth anew, what wilt thou do?”

“I shall greet it as I greet the snows of Irithyll: as an aspect of our world, kin to the air and water, no more. I will never again wear the Fire Keepers’ black. There will be no firelinking. ‘Tis unnatural. Master Gwyndolin will not allow it.”

Something shifts in Elisabeth, a subtle hardening of her shoulders.

“I will not allow it.”

That startles Friede into silence. This woman gave up her life’s purpose - her great love, she called it - and found purpose and love she deems greater still. But how could she have known she would find those things when she closed her hands on the First Flame, when she burned her Ariandel? How could she have known she would not be lost?

The answer comes to Friede with a bitter taste at the back of her mouth: Elisabeth was not alone. Dunstan was with her when she made her choice, a man she trusted and was perhaps beginning to love even then. Gwyndolin was with her too, to share in her loss. Vilhelm was the closest thing Friede had to such a companion, and he may well be dead or worse. 

She has forgotten the mushrooms in her lap. She picks one up to occupy her hands, breaks off the stem, and is about to toss it in the bucket when she glimpses something out of the corner of her eye, something light against the darkness. It is the letter from Miquella, pinned beneath the bucket. Siegward must have put it there for safekeeping. Perhaps Friede dropped it when she lost herself earlier today.

Her throw goes awry. The mushroom falls into the grass with a frosty rustle.

Elisabeth notices the noise. “Art thou well, my lady?”

Friede wishes everyone would stop asking her that. Is the answer not obvious?

Siegward spares her the trouble of coming up with a lie or a cutting remark. He must have followed her line of sight, because he tugs the parchment from beneath the bucket and regards it thoughtfully.

“You should write to her, you know,” he says. “It would do Lady Yorshka good, and you as well, I daresay.”

So Siegward read the letter too. Friede cannot bring herself to be irritated. She merits no right to privacy.

“And what am I to write?” she demands, taking refuge in sharpness. She can hardly apologize for impaling Yorshka on a scythe, although she is sorrier for that than she can explain. “No words will undo what I have done.”

“It seems she has already forgiven you everything,” Siegward says. “That is her way, and you will not change her mind, whatever perfectly good arguments you may present. She wishes to know you. Speak to her.”

Friede considers the parchment. So innocent it is, and so crucial.

She has always been ruthlessly practical when it comes to her own survival. She knows how to make do with what she has. Right now, cut off from Ariandel with no home or purpose, that letter is all she has. If she doesn’t take Yorshka’s hand - and hold on to it this time - she is going to keep falling.

When Siegward decides they have collected enough mushrooms for today, he takes Friede and Elisabeth to a manor tucked away at the end of an unassuming street. It is not as large or ornate as many other houses in Irithyll, so Friede takes it to be Siegward’s home. Then, unexpectedly, he leads his companions around the back of the building to a cellar door rather than entering by the front. He opens the door onto a stone-paved room with a generous hearth and bundled vegetables hanging from the beams.

“My first meeting with Master Gwyndolin was in this room,” Siegward says. “He came from battle with the tyrant Sulyvahn and was sorely in need of warmth and rest. Imagine his surprise when he found me brewing estus soup in his kitchen!”

Friede goes rigid in the middle of the room. “This is the Dark Sun’s home?”

Siegward chuckles. “Have no fear. You won’t be struck down.”

The man has an unsettling knack for guessing what Friede is thinking.

Elisabeth pulls her gently into the kitchen by her wrist. Beams of concentrated moonlight do not rain down on her.

The evening is no less strange than the afternoon. They bundle up most of their bounty and put it into cold storage to be used later, and the rest they slide onto skewers with slices of onion and other vegetables. These Siegward insists Friede help him cook, although she has never cooked any more than she needed to survive. At first she is sure he means to embarrass her, but no: he instructs her how much to add of spices, herbs, and oil, and never condescends. Friede’s inclination to sneer at him fades away.

When they are done, they have a platter full of skewers to feast on. Friede’s first bite comes with an irrepressible wash of delight. It’s good. Savory, earthy, with just the right amount of spice. She cannot remember when last she took pleasure in food. To the Unkindled tongue, most food tastes gray and ashen.

“Thou’rt a magician, sir,” she says. She takes another bite, and then another. She does not want this warmth and flavor to leave her mouth.

“’Tis good Siegward’s gift,” Elisabeth says, with a look that goes straight through Friede. “Food that even the Unkindled may enjoy.”

Siegward just beams.

Friede does not know whether he is doing all this out of deference to Yorshka’s will or if he truly is so cordial. She is not going to ask. She has good food in front of her, she is not burning, and that is enough.

Dunstan comes down the stairs after a while. He stops at the bottom and looks around with dark eyebrows raised. “You’re not eating with…”

He jerks his head in Friede’s direction.

“Why not? She helped us in our work,” Siegward says, taking a long swig from his mug and thumping it down as punctuation.

Dunstan folds his arms. “We just tried to kill each other.”

“You and Master Gwyndolin once did the same.”

“That was ages ago!”

“And look what’s happened since.”

“You’re too generous, Siegward. You can’t see anything bad in anyone.”

“And you can see nothing but.”

Dunstan lingers a moment longer, shaking his head. “I’ll eat at home.”


Before he can turn on his heel and go, Elisabeth pulls out the chair next to her with a deliberate scrape that negates all need for words. Her opinion is plain.

Dunstan looks from the chair to his wife. A silent contest of wills ensues. Dunstan bends first. With one eye always on Friede, he walks around the scrubbed wooden table and drops into the chair beside Elisabeth. She casts him a look as if to say, Was that so difficult? Dunstan picks up a skewer from the platter and bites into three mushrooms at once so he doesn’t have to answer.

“We Unkindled draw violence like honey draws flies,” Siegward muses. “You know how it is. Our battles are very often impersonal.”

“I know that. I don’t care what she did to me. We couldn’t settle our differences with words, so we settled them with blades: that’s our way. But what she did to Yorshka was personal.”

“”Twas not mine intent,” Friede mutters, for all the good it will do.

“You know it is as the lady says,” Siegward tells Dunstan pointedly. “You guessed as much yourself. And Lady Yorshka has asked for peace among us.”

Dunstan pours himself a full tankard from the jug in the middle of the table. Apparently he needs the fortification. “I should have expected this from a man who tried to reason with a fire demon.”

“I might have succeeded, too, had you not gone charging in.”

Dunstan opens his mouth to retort, and Elisabeth stops him with a small hand on his. Her gray eyes are on Friede again, an affectionate smile on her lips. These men, it says. They are foolish, yet I love them.

Despite the suspicious glares Dunstan keeps throwing her, Friede’s own mouth curves upward. It is madness to be sitting here sharing a meal with people who have every right to hate her - part of her still recoils from the strangeness of it - yet it is good, too. When did she last do something so wonderfully ordinary? No fighting, no scheming, no rot or fire, just food and conversation. New possibilities. For the first time since she left Ariandel, she does not feel like she is falling.

The parchment that was a bird is lying on the table. Friede is not yet certain what her life will become or if she will stay in Irithyll, but that letter is an open wound. If nothing else, she needs to answer it. When everyone else has gone, she decides, she will sit here and write.

Strange - were she not a withered, undeserving thing, she could almost imagine that this is…

~~~


Home.

This is the first thought in Sirris’s mind when she wakes. Not Hodrick, not guilt and shame. Home.

Amalie’s body is pressed warm against hers, lean arms folded across Sirris’s chest, and Sirris feels safe. She has not felt safe since before her grandfather’s betrayal, nor has she allowed herself to take comfort in another person’s arms. She almost weeps with relief when she realizes she is no longer shaking.

She does not immediately sit up and ready herself for her duties, as is her custom. Instead she lets herself drift, feeling Amalie’s chest rise and fall, reveling in the stillness. There is something sacred in that stillness, that breathing. Two people living in unison.

Amalie stirs and hooks her chin over Sirris’s shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

For once, Sirris does not pretend she is fine. “I am not entirely unraveled,” she says, glad to feel a bit of her usual dryness returning to her.

“Do you still see your granddad?”

Sirris casts her gaze around the bedchamber. The room is sparsely furnished and there aren’t many places for ghosts to hide, just a corner between the wardrobe and the window where humanity is pooling. It is formless now, though. Just a cloud of tiny sprites.

“No,” she says. 

“I don’t either.”

“He will return, I am sure.” She knows Hodrick isn’t going to go away when she leaves Lothric Castle. He will be with her even when she can’t see him, when there is no free humanity to take his form. He is part of her.

“I told you, we need to go down the Pit of Hollows on the way home. What Hodrick did wasn’t your fault. He made his own choices. You need to tell him that.”

“We cannot take Lady Gwynevere to the Pit of Hollows.”

“Why not? There’s no one down there now, is there?” Amalie props herself on her elbows and looks intently at Sirris. “I know you’re scared, ma’am, but if you don’t do this you’re not going to get better.”

Amalie is right, of course. But the thought of going down that pit, seeing the mound of vertebrae, the spot where Sirris put her estoc through Hodrick’s back, makes her shiver. Even with some sleep behind her, she is still drained and unsteady. Her confession cost her more than she thought, hollowed her out, and she hasn’t quite filled up again.

She decides there is no point to trying to be strong now. Amalie has already seen her at her absolute lowest. 

“I am not ready,” she says.

Amalie tucks a strand of hair behind Sirris’s ear. The touch does not feel strange at all. “All right. You don’t have to be ready for that yet. What are you ready for?”

Something practical, something dutiful. Sirris is good at things like that. 

“I must speak with Lady Gwynevere and learn when she is willing to depart for Irithyll.”

“I’ll go with you. Do you want your veil? I still have it.”

Sirris is surprised to find that she doesn’t want it. Just now, she does not feel capable of precision or elegance or any of the Darkmoon virtues her veil represents. She does not know when she will be worthy of wearing it again - or no, “worthy” is the wrong word. Too harsh, Amalie would say, and she would be right. Better to think of herself as someone who has lost weight to an illness, and her veil as a piece of clothing that no longer fits. She needs to grow back into it, become healthy again.

She gathers her breath and pushes herself upright, accepting Amalie’s supporting hands. “No,” she says when the dizziness has passed, “not yet. I will simply have to ask Lady Gwynevere’s forbearance.”

And so it is that she finds herself standing before the Princess of Sunlight in nothing but her shirt, trousers, and boots. The hour must be early according to Lothric Castle’s clocks, for the ramshackle market Gwynevere showed her yesterday is quiet. A few vendors are setting up their stalls, merchants laying out wares and smiths stoking their forges. Gwynevere is in a small courtyard verdant with luminous trees. She has been reading to a group of children, who are now trickling away in their parents’ arms, waving to her as they go. She has a lantern on a stool beside her so she can see her book. It occurs to Sirris for the first time that as a god, Gwynevere is not blessed with dark-sight like the humans of this age.

When she sees Sirris and Amalie, Gwynevere closes her book and lays it aside. 

“The little ones do so love their morning tales,” she says. By her voice, it is plain she loves them just as much. “How farest thou, Knight Sirris? Thou wert so suddenly taken ill. I feared for thee.”

Sirris bows her head. “I am recovering. Please do not fear, my lady. My apologies for appearing before you out of uniform.”

“Thou wert unwell: thou may’st dress as thou wilt,” Gwynevere says, easy as summer rain. Then her face darkens. “How like my brother thou art. He too disliked to appear before anyone ‘in disarray.’ Never did he know his own beauty.”

“You’ll see him soon,” Amalie says. “It’s not a long journey. There are a few working bonfires, and I know the secret ways.”

“But there are dangers,” Sirris adds.

Gwynevere draws herself up. “I am unafraid. I trust my brother would send none but his very finest to escort me.”

That hurts. The pain is so swift and unexpected that Sirris cannot breathe.

Amalie speaks while Sirris struggles with herself: “When would you like to leave?”

“Oh, I would depart this moment would it not alarm my people. Permit me to give them notice and collect my belongings, and then we may be on our way. Bernice and Roland will seek to waylay me - they trust my protection only to themselves - but I will be firm. How I long to see sweet Lin again!”

As her breath returns, Sirris catches a glint of mischief in Amalie’s eyes. “If you called him Lin, did he call you Vere?”

Mortified, Sirris elbows her hard. “Please pardon her, my lady. She is -”

“Peace.” Gwynevere’s face is radiant. “Aye, he called me Vere. He thought it improper, but he knew it pleased me. I pray he will still address me so.”

Sirris thinks of everything she has seen of Gwyndolin since he put out the flame, this new person who stands moonlight duty with his knights, rides a wolf into battle, and smiles so freely. 

“I believe he will,” she says.

~~~

His memories return to him in larger pieces after that first day. He and Eira visit the colosseum many times, and the flash of her lightning illuminates the precious things he has buried inside him. 

One of his clearest memories is of standing in the palace’s dusty training yard, adjusting Gwyndolin’s arms on his bow. Gwyndolin is such a delicate little thing in this memory, veiled and gloved, yet he has an aim to rival Hawkeye Gough’s. It is not easy for him: his arms shake when he draws the bowstring to its full measure. When he manages to steady himself, however, he strikes true. One day he hits the bullseye and then hits it again, splitting his own arrow down the middle. Gwynhael picks him up and holds him high, and in a rare display of mirth, little Gwyndolin lifts his arms to praise the sun.

Their father does not know about any of this, because Gwyn does not want his youngest child in the training yard. He claims it is because Gwyndolin’s health is too fragile and his body unsuited to weapons. Gwynhael knows this is an excuse even if it is partially sincere. The truth is that Gwyn neither understands nor respects his lastborn. He cannot see that Gwyndolin has his own sort of strength.

Perhaps he prefers not to see it. After all, everyone in Anor Londo knows that a moonlight child born to the Lord of Sunlight - a darkmoon child at that - is an ill omen. To accept that Gwyndolin is strong is to acknowledge that Dark may soon eclipse Gwyn’s sun. Better to keep him out of the public eye, where his growing abilities will not frighten anyone.

Gwynhael is not frightened of Dark in this memory. The dragons he loves were here before the flame and they will be here long after it is gone. They do not cling to a single age as if it is all there will ever be. They stand firm amidst the tides of time and let the world turn around them. The gods would do well to learn from such stolid ways.

So Gwynhael trains his brother and trusts that when the time comes, Gwyndolin will find a way to shine.

He is always Gwynhael in his remembrances. He does not feel like Gwynhael now. That name was taken from him and he does not know if he can reclaim it. He does not know if he wants to. It denotes a scion of Anor Londo, and that is no longer who he is. Faraam feels better, more familiar. But Faraam stands for war and nothing else, and he is more than war - he is beginning to remember that. Sen poses the same problem.

He wonders if an old name can be made new. Can it be reshaped, absorb new meanings and discard those that no longer fit?

Gwyndolin’s friends and family call him Lin now, he muses. Ignorant of his own past though he is, he can see what that means: Gwyndolin has shed Gwyn. There might be a lesson in that.

This is a matter for another time. For now, he is satisfied that when he sees his brother again, he will not stare at Gwyndolin like a blank-minded hollow.

Eira is not his only aid in his quest to recover himself: Morgott helps him too. They both understand without ever having to say it aloud that the best way to clear one’s mind is to swing a weapon. They spend long hours sparring together in the colosseum. The Omen King is relentless, and that is perfect. He can lose himself in the whirlwind of Morgott’s attacks, the burn of his muscles and the clang of steel, and forget that he is a shell of himself. When he has a blade in his hand, he is whole.

The sparring matches raise different memories than those brought forth by Eira’s lightning. The first time he defeated his father in training: Gwyn’s face held at swordpoint, full-bearded and proud. His first dragon ride: powerful wings and a huge spine flexing beneath him, stony skin rippling, uncomfortable and magnificent, the closest he had ever felt to immortality. 

And then something troubling. An argument with his father - the last one - both of them shouting and drawing weapons on each other from opposite ends of a hallway. Gwyndolin throwing himself between them, crying for them to stop. Gwynhael unable to fully check his momentum in time. His swordspear rending silk and then flesh, white turning red.

When he sees this, he falters. His hands go numb and his blunted practice weapon falls into the dust.

He does not realize he is on one knee until Morgott offers him a hand up. He takes it without a touch of shame. He is swaying when he comes up and has to plant his swordspear in the sand and lean on it.

Morgott eyes him with quiet concern. “Ill visions?”

He nods. His breath is coming fast, and not just from exertion. Until now it had not occurred to him that he might have sealed away unpleasant memories amidst the treasured ones.

Besides such jarring moments, however, he feels more and more like himself - or at least the self he predicts he should be. Hints of a personality emerge during his sparring sessions. He finds himself changing his attack patterns with almost playful caprice, catching Morgott off-guard with a thrust or a delayed sweep. Morgott notices too. “The cheek of thee,” he mutters when he takes an unexpected blow under one arm. Although that blow might have been lethal in true combat, he does not sound at all upset. There is hope: they can both see it.

And then one day, they make a mistake. 

He and Eira are returning from the colosseum. The memory of a summer ball is still fresh in his mind, and he is regaling Eira with as many details as he can hold onto. He was so free that night, dancing with one lady of court after another until Ornstein scolded him for flirting too much. Eira grins as he describes it to her. They are both glad to hear his speech coming more readily.

Then they enter a courtyard with a trickling fountain, and Morgott comes around the corner. He is carrying a girl in a dressing gown in the crook of one arm. Pearly scales gleam around her eyes, and a draconic tail dangles from beneath her hem.

Eira swears under her breath. “They must have taken Yorshka for some air. Go back, go back.”

She tries to push him into the alley they came from, but it’s too late. He has already seen the person standing next to Morgott.

That person is not the child from the memories. His hair isn’t cropped so short, and he holds himself with new dignity. There is a hardness to the edges of his face that speaks of many battles left behind. But those pale, solemn eyes are still the same.

Gwyndolin stops dead. He puts a hand on the fountain for support.

“Gwynhael?” he breathes. His voice is scarcely audible above the leaves skittering across the cobbles.

Affection blooms warm in not-Gwynhael, but it is distant still, more distant than it should be.

“Lin, he’s not himself,” Eira warns. 

Gwyndolin looks between everyone in the courtyard, confused and helpless. “Miquella gave me to understand my brother had not yet arrived in Leyndell.”

“He hasn’t, exactly,” Eira says, grimacing. “He locked away all the important parts of himself to keep them safe, and it’s been so long that he’s having trouble finding them again. He knows who you are, he knows he cares about you, but not much more than that. You weren’t supposed to find out until Yorshka was a bit better…”

Gwyndolin ignores her. Looking hurt, he takes a few limping steps towards his brother. What is he seeing? A husk of the person he hoped to meet, no doubt. 

Gwyndolin reaches up and puts his hand on his brother’s arm. His eyes are wide, lips parted with pain, breathing hard. He does not - or cannot - speak for a long while. He just looks. Searches.

Sen-Faraam-Gwynhael’s hands curl into fists. This is agonizing. Instinct compels him to comfort his little brother, yet he cannot. He might frighten Gwyndolin if he tried. He knows he does not move, speak, or even look like Gwynhael of old. Those things are still lost behind his walls.

Gwyndolin takes a shaky breath and makes a brave attempt to smile, though he seems closer to tears. “I feared thee dead.”

That burns, albeit from far away. “Nay. Not quite.” 

Then his gaze falls to Gwyndolin’s feet and he sees there are no snakes trailing from beneath his robes. It isn’t cold today, so they cannot be coiled up around his legs for warmth. Something is wrong.

“Little dragon…what befell thee?”

Chapter Text

“Little dragon…what befell thee?”

Gwyndolin has not heard that voice in ages. The last time was after that terrible argument with Gwyn, when Gwynhael knelt at his brother’s bedside in an agony of regret, shushing Gwyndolin every time he tried to apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Hush thee, Lin,” Gwynhael would say, and press Gwyndolin’s hand to his brow. 

Not long after that, Gwynhael was gone. Just gone. Gwyn never spoke his name again, nor did anyone else in Anor Londo. 

Grieved though he was, Gwyndolin understood the reason. Gwynhael could hardly declare the dragons’ way superior to the gods’, draw steel on his father, injure his brother, and expect to keep his place. Gwyn had no choice but to pronounce banishment. 

So Gwyndolin thought then, and yet he never forgot his brother’s name. He kept it close to his heart and held it tight on days when it was difficult to remember that he had once been loved. It was his first small act of rebellion.

And now Gwynhael stands before him again, still tall and wild-haired, wearing an armored tunic and sandals that went out of fashion when the gods were young. But he is diminished, too. Skin worn by time and weather. Standing all wrong, with his hands helpless at his sides when they should be acting, doing. Voice too soft and uncertain (Gwynhael was never uncertain), and hoarse as though he is remembering how to use it. 

Where is boisterous, reckless, crude, warm, big-hearted Gwynhael?

None of this feels real. None of the things Gwyndolin thought he would say make sense now.

Miquella should have warned him. As upsetting as it would have been, it would also have been preferable to this sudden confrontation with what was and what is no longer.

Before he knows it, Gwyndolin has sunk down on the edge of the fountain. His heart skips, and he wonders if Miquella might be right to be concerned about it after all. 

“I…cannot tell thee. Not now,” he says between shallow breaths, his voice weak. “Compel me not to tell thee, please…”

Despite his best efforts, his hand flutters to his chest. Eira casts him an anxious look. 

“Is there any water left in the flask you had at the colosseum?” she asks Gwynhael. When he unhooks the flask from his belt and hands it to her, she adds softly, “It’s not your fault.”

Gwynhael turns his face to the sky.

Gwyndolin hardly registers Eira sitting down beside him and offering him the flask. “Go on. Sip it,” she says, and Gwyndolin accepts it like a puppet, although he is not thirsty. He does not know what else to do.

The water is cool in his mouth and settles his mind a little. The flask trembles as he lowers it from his lips. He does not let it go. He needs something to hold.

“Your brother’s already getting better,” Eira reassures him. Gwyndolin finds her closeness more reassuring still, her steady body tucked close to his just as it was when she carried him, slime-soaked and dying, out of Anor Londo. Eira’s nearness means safety. It means everything will be all right, even if it hurts for a while. 

Gwyndolin’s heart slows as he reminds himself of this, enough for him to speak. “Miquella knoweth some means of healing Gwynhael, sayest thou?”

“He has an idea,” Eira says. “He said Malenia used to lock herself away too, though not…like this. I’m not sure he’s ever done what he’s planning before, but you know Miquella. He never gives up.”

That does not sound as optimistic as Gwyndolin hoped. He leans into Eira for strength. He cannot lose his head, not when Gwynhael needs him for the first time in either of their lives. Or no - not the first time. Gwynhael needed someone to fight for him when Gwyn sent him away too. Gwyndolin did not come to his defense then. All the more reason he must do so now.

When Gwynhael turns back around, there is a cornered sort of dread in his eyes. Dunstan looks the same way when he knows a blow is about to fall upon him.

“Did Father take thy serpents from thee?” he asks.

Gwyndolin’s head snaps up. “Nay, of course not. He…did not love me as he ought, but he would not raise his sword against me.”

Gwynhael’s voice drops lower still. “Did I take them from thee? Is this the tale thou wilt not tell me?”

Compassion floods through Gwyndolin, so strong he reaches out a hand to his brother. “‘Twas not thee. Never think so.”

“I struck thee with my spear in my confrontation with Father, did I not?”

“Thou didst, but ’twas not thine intent. Thine aim was to cross blades with Father, not with me.”

It takes Gwyndolin a moment to realize that he just said exactly what Yorshka has been saying about Friede. That is a vexing, uncomfortable prospect, and he has no wherewithal to address it.

He looks up at his sister, who until now was drowsing in Morgott’s arms. Yorshka looks back at him, quite awake.

Gwynhael draws his attention back. The god’s body is drawn tight as the head of a drum. “Thou’rt certain I did not cut thy serpents from thee in that clash?”

“Nay. Thy swordspear struck my chest when I threw myself between Father and thee. Thou didst restrain thyself in time to spare me mortal injury. The wound bled a good deal, as I recall, but I soon recovered. The true tale of my serpents’ deaths is terribly long and difficult. I have not the heart to recount it now.”

Gwynhael does not look convinced.

“Thou wert ever and always good to me,” Gwyndolin goes on, as calm as he can be amidst his hurt. “To me thou gav’st gentleness and patience thou couldst summon for no other. When Oolacile fell to the Abyss, I fled Anor Londo in grief and lost myself in the streets - remember’st thou? I was soon ill and scarce able to stand. ’Twas thou who found me, took me in thine arms, and brought me home. Such was thy way. Now I shall bring thee home.”

Slowly, Gwynhael lifts his hand into the space between himself and Gwyndolin. His fingertips brush his younger brother’s.

It is at this moment that Yorshka slides down in Morgott’s arms, and the Omen King, with obvious reluctance and care, sets her on her feet. Gwyndolin sees a silent exchange pass between them. Morgott holds Yorshka a few seconds while she steadies herself, then runs a hand over her hair and turns her ever so gently to face Gwynhael. With that, he lets her go.

When Yorshka takes her first wobbling step, Gwyndolin’s whole soul aches to help her. In fact, he has half risen from the fountain when he remembers his promise to Yorshka and himself: he must let his sister go. It’s only a few paces between her and Gwynhael. If she could kneel in bloody water and ease all those wretched corvians into death, she can do this.

With great effort, Gwyndolin forces himself to sit back and watch.

And Yorshka does find her feet. After that first step, she puts out her unbound arm for balance and walks the next few paces with greater assurance. She looks so vulnerable to Gwyndolin’s eye, a child in a nightdress, her chest bandaged and her left arm in a sling, and yet she carries herself with great resolve. She does not need Gwyndolin to sweep her into his arms. 

Yorshka looks up into Gwynhael’s weathered face. “Be not afraid. My brother told me naught but good tales of thee.”

The change in Gwynhael is immediate. Yorshka has touched his heart’s core and told him just what he needed to hear, and in response to her mysterious power, Gwynhael transforms. His helpless hesitancy falls away from him like ill-fitting clothes. Something has broken in him, or rather slipped into place, like a figure resolving out of fog. He kneels before Yorshka and supports her by her arms, his powerful hands turning as tender as they always were for Gwyndolin. All at once he is himself. Those are Gwynhael’s hands, his posture, his touch. Gwyndolin knows then that his brother is still here, even if he slips out of alignment again.

Relief cascades out to the tips of Gwyndolin’s fingers. Without thought, he reaches for Eira’s arm and clasps it tight.

“Do I know thee?” Gwynhael asks Yorshka. Even his voice has changed: self-possessed, less hoarse.

“This is Yorshka, Lin’s sister,” Eira says. “You’ve never met. I told you about her, didn’t I?”

“She is Priscilla’s daughter,” Gwyndolin adds, hoping that will spark a memory.

Gwynhael cocks his head at the name. He searches within himself a moment, then mutters something distracted and drags himself back to Yorshka.

“I see thou’rt a little dragon also.”

Yorshka bows her head. “I am no dragon. I am neither strong nor fierce.”

“Thy wound speaketh otherwise. ’Tis said thou wert lately thy brother’s salvation in battle.”

“She was my salvation when first I set eyes upon her,” Gwyndolin says. Yorshka gives him a soft, glowing smile.

“She hath strength all her own. She is a healer of generous spirit,” Morgott concludes in an approving murmur. 

Gwynhael pats Yorshka’s uninjured shoulder. “Warriors stand and fall by their healers’ skill. I do not doubt I owe my life many times over to those who wield thine arts.” His eyes fall on the slender horns winding down either side of Yorshka’s neck. “Thy purple scales are exceeding rare. Mine own wyvern beareth armor of deepest of blue, but never have I seen this hue. ’Tis an omen. Thy fate will be great indeed, I daresay.”

Any other time, Gwyndolin would have dismissed this as a polite remark and nothing more. Now, having seen Ariandel’s greatwolf lick Yorshka’s face and savage Friede on her behalf, he wonders if it might be true. The thought both frightens and excites him. What a joy it would be if Yorshka, who has so often felt useless, is indeed destined for a great purpose.

And if she must leave me? asks his heart.

Gwyndolin lacks the fortitude to argue with himself. He turns his attention back to Gwynhael and Yorshka.

“I know not how I may aid thee, yet I would have thee call upon me if I may be of use,” Yorshka is saying.

There is that phrase again: Of use. Yorshka learned it from Gwyndolin, and she has never quite grown out of it. How Gwyndolin hates it.

Gwynhael notices it too. “Thou’rt a comfort to me even now,” he says.

Were he himself, he would have smiled the sun-warm smile he reserved for his very dearest. He does not do that now. He does, however, keep one hand on Yorshka as he gets to his feet so she never has to bear her own weight. Gwyndolin recognizes that tempered strength. Gwynhael supported him the same way at the end of their bow training sessions, when his legs and snakes were ready to crumple beneath him. Gwyndolin must cling to these glimpses of his true brother if he is to endure the days to come.

“I hope we will be friends, when thou’rt well,” Yorshka says, bowing shyly. 

“I shall take thee riding dragonback - and our brother also, if ’tis not too late,” Gwynhael replies. His sense of self slips then, receding back into a melancholy that does not suit him. 

Eira glances at Morgott as if to say, Well, that’s that. Nothing to be done about it now. “Shall we go see Miquella?” she asks.

Gwynhael nods. “As soon as we may.”

“Are you sure you’re ready? We could work together a while longer. It might do you good to remember a bit more on your own. Then it won’t all come back at once when Miquella does…whatever it is he has in mind.”

“Prithee, be not rash. Not for my sake,” Gwyndolin says, in case there is any rashness left in this new, damaged Gwynhael. He suspects there is. That trait runs too deep ever to be lost.

Gwynhael folds his arms over his chest. The gesture is at once familiar and somehow out of place, dislocated. 

“I wish to be myself,” he says.

Morgott makes a low noise in his throat. “The Tarnished hath the right of it, outlander. Be not hasty. To recover thy life entire may do thee harm, if thou’rt incautious.”

Gwynhael’s posture does not change. He is set firm, like the stony dragons he loves. Gwyndolin can imagine what he would have said, were he well: Caution is not among my virtues.

Before anyone can argue further, a small, dry flutter overhead stops them all short. Gwyndolin would have thought it a leaf on the breeze did he not know that sound so well. Seconds later, a paper bird flaps down into Yorshka’s open palm. It is already covered in writing on the visible side, meaning it has been used once before. This bird is part of a correspondence - a reply.

Curious, Gwyndolin asks, “Didst thou write to Dunstan, dearest one? Or perhaps Siegward?”

Yroshka does not reply, just regards the bird with a mixture of guilt and resolution. Why does she look like a child who has broken something valuable and is not entirely sorry? The last time Gwyndolin saw that expression on Yorshka’s face, she was indeed a little girl, and had just rung her chime - his chime then - without permission. 

As Yorshka has no free hand with which to unfold the bird, Morgott does it for her. His heavy brow furrows as he scans the page. Then he hands it to Gwyndolin and Eira, and they survey it together.

The handwriting is unfamiliar. Despite many crossings-out, it is neater than either Dunstan’s or Siegward’s, and somehow pointed. Gwyndolin’s shoulders tense at the sight of it. His dread only increases when he reads the first few lines.

My Lady Yorshka,

I am not by nature sentimental or unguarded in my feelings, and I find it difficult to set to paper such matters as occupy mine heart. Thus, I prithee forgive whatever coldness thou perceivest in this letter. It is not meant for thee. I do not wish to wound thee further - quite the opposite.

I cannot express the pain I feel at having been an instrument of thy suffering. Whatever words I might choose would fall woefully short and do thee insult. Neither will I attempt to absolve myself of my deeds or accept thine absolution. Never have I known such grace. I merit it not at all. I did not intend to strike thee, as thou knowest, yet I did intend to strike thy brother, as thou knowest also. For that and for the wound I dealt thee, and most of all for thy mercy, by which I live, I am indebted to thee. If by my life or death I may aid thee, only say the word and I shall do all in my power. I know little but battle, yet I might turn my scythes to thy defense if thou wilt allow it.

I must urge thee to recover thy strength ere seeking to meet with me. I will not have thee tax thyself unduly on mine account. I must confess also that I find the thought of laying eyes upon thee a daunting one. Thou art possessed of a kindness that in others would be foolish, yet in thee is piercing as the finest blade. I am defenseless before it.  If I may be so bold as to advise thee, my lady, nurture well this gift. Thou wilt find good use for it.

I assure thee my keepers are kinder than I deserve. The merry fellow called Siegward requested that I assist him in picking mushrooms today, and this night we prepared a fine meal together. It was a passing strange day, yet it was good, I believe, to turn mine hands from weapons for a time. 

Though I know not whether Irithyll might be mine home - and indeed, I do not presume to it - it is a beautiful place. I see thy flowers at every turn, and thy gentle heart within them. I see also how they cheer the people of this city. Thy work is their light and their hope.

I pray thou art recovering swiftly in the company of those who care for thee. I take some small comfort in the knowledge that thy dear ones are so fierce and devoted to thee. That is a blessing, I need not tell thee.

Rest well, dragon of spring, and spare no thought for me. Bend all thy will towards thine healing.

The message is unsigned, but Gwyndolin knows exactly who it is from by the time he reaches the bottom of the page. He cannot speak. He should have expected something like this, given Yorshka’s plea that Friede be spared, yet still the letter comes as a blow to his gut.

Yorshka did not tell him she had written to Friede. She is keeping secrets from him.

She is also watching for Gwyndolin’s reaction, trembling a little beneath Gwynhael’s hands but not wavering. Her eyes are dry and determined. 

“Might I read my letter?” she asks.

Gwyndolin’s reply comes sharp, more afraid than angry: “What possessed thee to write to the woman who well-nigh killed thee?”

“She is but lost,” Yorshka says, shrugging off Gwynhael’s protective grip. “I have seen it.”

“Thou’rt too trusting. Thy good heart will be thine end.”

“She is not Sulyvahn,” Yorshka protests.

“Sulyvahn, too, was but a wandering sorcerer ere he poisoned me and took thee captive.”

Pain flashes across Yorshka’s face.

Gwyndolin lets out a breath to calm himself. He has been too harsh. “Knowest thou what thou doest?”

“Might I read my letter?” Yorshka repeats.

To Gwyndolin’s astonishment, he sees defiance in her eyes. What is he to make of this? Yorshka has never been the least bit rebellious. She must be quite certain of whatever she has in mind for Friede and herself - and it must be important.

I wish for Yorshka to find her place, do I not? Gwyndolin thinks. Why can I not give her the letter? What harm will it do? ’Tis naught but parchment!

But it is more than that. That is why he cannot put it in Yorshka’s hand.

Eira settles the matter for him. “I don’t see why she can’t read it. It’s not threatening.”

Even Morgott, the most careful of everyone present, shifts his weight in a full-bodied shrug. “‘Tis an honest letter, to mine eye.”

“And if it isn’t, we have Friede outnumbered ten to one,” Eira says.

Gwyndolin feels just as outnumbered. Too much is happening at once. He cannot bear much more.

In the end, the unaccustomed steel in Yorshka’s eyes wins out. Gwyndolin extends the letter to her.

Yorshka relaxes once she has the unfolded bird in her hands. She leans against Gwynhael while she reads it. Gwynhael, looking relieved to be of use, supports her. When Yorshka has finished, she gives a single firm nod. Then all at once she is Gwyndolin’s little sister again, smiling her soft bright smile.

“All will be well,” she says.

She has used that phrase more than once since her injury, and each time it sent spidery fingers up Gwyndolin’s spine. What did she say as she lay in the haze of Ursa’s perfume? I shall live. I have yet to climb the tower.

She knows something Gwyndolin does not. That is becoming increasingly evident. Gwyndolin does not like it.

I fear for thee, he thinks, and wonders if Gwyn ever thought the same about his children.

~~~

The residents of Lothric Castle made their farewells in the marketplace, amidst the stalls and little courtyards with their luminous trees. It was not a formal occasion. Gwynevere seemed to prefer it that way. With no pedestal or throne to separate her from her people, she embraced every child who came to her and promised to come back soon. She called each and every one by name.

It was a long, rather chaotic ritual. This was not at all how things would have been done in Irithyll while the flame still burned, nor, Sirris is certain, in Anor Londo. Yet there was such warmth in it. The people approached Gwynevere as a beloved kinswoman. Without apprehension, they presented her with handmade protective talismans. By the time the last of the crowd trickled away, Gwynevere had made a belt of them.

Gwyndolin would have approved. He dissolved all separation between humans and gods precisely for moments like this.

Bernice and Roland were the last to bid their mistress goodbye, and the most difficult to convince. They made a string of arguments to convince Gwynevere not to travel to Irithyll, many of which, Sirris had to admit, were good. Gwynevere did not bend to any of them, not even at the end, when Bernice said a little desperately, “You can’t see in the dark, ma’am! There are no lights beyond the castle.” 

To this Gwynevere took both Bernice’s hands and said, “My brother’s knights are as dark-sighted as thou. They will lead me. If thou hast doubts as to their abilities, prithee say so and cease this game. We all tire of it.”

Bernice didn’t say anything after that. Roland just shrugged and, in a rare display of resistance to his sister’s will, said, “They would have won the duel if you had fought fair.”

Bernice looked like she wanted to hit him, but in the end she shook Sirris’s hand and the two of them came to an understanding. They wanted the same thing, after all: to keep Gwynevere safe. Sirris would have been every bit as ruthless in her captain’s defense as Bernice was in her lady’s. Such is their duty.

After that, it was only a blink before they were at the silver-burning bonfire on the castle ramparts. Now they are out beneath the black sky, descending the ancient stone steps into the Undead Settlement. Amalie is leading Gwynevere by the hand, giving directions now and then - “Step down, my lady, that’s right, and again…” - while Sirris walks ahead to look for danger. She and Amalie dispatched all the skittering thralls they encountered on their way to the castle, but they both know from experience that there are always more thralls. 

Sirris knows there aren’t likely to be any thralls out here, on these large flights of steps leading down to the village gate. It’s too open for their taste; they prefer corners from which they can ambush their enemies. There aren’t even any stray dogs that she can see. Still, she stays alert, sweeping her gaze from side to side. She is so close to bringing Gwynevere home. She cannot fail now.

More than that, she needs something with which to busy her mind. Once she passes through the gate at the bottom of these steps, she will be back in Hodrick’s territory. If she is going to hallucinate her grandfather’s ghost anywhere, it will be here.

Amalie helps to raise Sirris’s spirits. She knows these stones like the battle scars on her body, and she has no trouble keeping up a conversation while assisting Gwynevere. Sirris is beginning to think Amalie’s chatter is as much a skill as her magic.

“The captain is different from how you might remember him - step down again, my lady, there you are, just a few more now,” Amalie says presently. “He’s not sad anymore. He’s a bit shy, but he likes to have people around him. In Irithyll we make our own moonlight, since there’s no sun anymore, and we all keep up the illusion together, the captain and his knights. Last step, my lady.”

Gwynevere lifts her skirts with her free hand and takes the last step down to the broad walkway before the gate. If she is frightened to be walking into darkness her divine eyes cannot penetrate, she holds herself tall in spite of it. Cloaked and dressed in a practical wool gown, she looks much sturdier than the silk-wrapped goddess of the painting in Gwyndolin’s parlor. Sirris can see Gwyn’s shade in the set of his daughter’s shoulders.

“He shareth his illusion with his knights? Then he is changed for the better,” Gwynevere said. “Always he was loath to ask another’s aid, and often he drove himself to grievous straits. More than once I knew him to faint for lack of food and sleep, so intent was he upon his magics.”

Amalie steps away and goes to the lever beside the village’s rusting portcullis. “I won’t lie to you: he still does that sometimes. We’ve all given him a proper scolding for it. It doesn’t do any good. He cares too much to stop.”

“But he is no longer alone?”

“Hardly ever. His friends all have keys to his house, and they’re always having supper with him and such, or else he’s eating at their homes. A few times a year he gives grand balls and invites everyone in the city.”

Gwynevere smiles beneath her hood. “Oh, I rejoice to hear it. Lin attended no balls in Anor Londo. The court would only look upon him as an aberration to be pitied and disparaged, said he. I fear he was quite right.”

“He doesn’t need to be afraid of that now, my lady. We all love him.”

“Doth he dance?”

“Slowly, on account of his legs not being so strong. He enjoys himself all the same, I think.”

Amalie pulls the lever, and the portcullis screeches up in a rain of metal flakes. Beyond lies the winding path up into the Undead Settlement. The dirt track meanders between teetering buildings that look like a good shove would collapse them, yet here they stand still, when Anor Londo lies abandoned. Sirris senses a curious permanence in these rickety wooden structures, as she did when she passed through here on the way to Lothric Castle. They are like rats, she decides: unlovely, adaptable survivors.

To Sirris and Amalie’s dark-sighted eyes, the Undead Settlement looks as all lightless places do: a monochrome landscape, silvered as if by full moonlight. Every edge, no matter how far away, is crisp. To Gwynevere, however, it is a void. She cannot possibly see anything more than vague black shapes against a blacker sky. 

The goddess wraps her arms around herself. “Lin knew I feared the dark. When we were young, he left orbs of light in my chambers so I would not be frightened should I return in the small hours of the night.”

“There is light and beauty aplenty in Irithyll,” Sirris assures her.

“We’ll be there soon,” Amalie adds, squeezing Gwynevere’s arm. “I used to live here; I know the way. In Irithyll the captain can give you one of his magic rings so you can visit whenever you like without having to walk. Bit like a homeward bone. Do you know what a homeward bone is?”

As she speaks, Amalie draws Gwynevere gently through the gate. By now Sirris knows that although her babble seems random, it is actually a shield.

And Gwynevere accepts it. “I do not. I am acquainted with a miracle known as Homeward - is it much the same?”

“It works just like the bones.”

“I suppose one must resort to morbid implements when one is undead -”

Something creaks overhead and Gwynevere gasps and jumps. Panting, she feels around for something to lean on while she catches her breath.

“Thy pardon, Knight Amalie, but I find this a most frightful place to make one’s home.”

Amalie reaches up and steadies the piece of broken metal dangling from a balcony railing above. The creaking stops. “It was all right. Bit harsh, but all right, until Aldrich’s witches came.”

“Aldrich. The Lord of Cinder?” Gwynevere murmurs. “Oft did that name follow Lin’s on travelers’ tongues. Was his the darkness of which they spoke, and his the darkness that consumed my brother?”

Amalie does not answer right away. She glances at Sirris, silently asking whether to continue. A crow squawks in the distance, as if to announce the grim tidings to come.

Better Gwynevere learn the truth now, Sirris thinks, than set eyes on her brother’s serpentless legs without due warning. 

“It was, my lady,” she says. “The travelers used the word ‘consumed’ in its literal sense.”

In the silence that follows, Gwynevere draws a long breath and lets it out again very slowly. She must know who Aldrich was. His habit.

“The captain’s all right now,” Amalie says quickly. “An undead warrior fought Aldrich with him and set him free. He did lose his snakes, but not his legs. He can still walk and dance and all.”

Gwynevere does not weep or whimper. Her only sign of distress is the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Beyond this, she stands as firm as any statue of Gwyn. Perhaps she has endured so much grief that it has lost its power to break her.

“I was not there to offer him healing,” she says, almost a whisper. 

“Do not dwell on it,” Sirris says. “I assure you your brother does not.”

Gwynevere pushes herself off the rough boards of the house she is leaning on. “Let us be on our way. I see mine hour is very late.”

“Not too late,” Amalie says, catching her meaning. “The captain still keeps a painting of you in his sitting room.”

For all its twisting alleys, the Undead Settlement is not a large place. It does not take them long to traverse it even with Amalie leading Gwynevere. They encounter very little resistance save for three thralls occupying a stable, two of which Amalie kills at range with well-placed blackflame orbs. The third, wielding a flamberge, she leaves for Sirris. Sirris knows why: this creature uses her grandfather’s weapon of choice. This is the first of Hodrick’s ghosts.

For a moment it is not a scuttling wretch in rags, half Sirris’s height at best, but a grown man with his round shield raised to deflect her. 

Sirris blinks furiously. Hodrick becomes an imp again, tottering towards her with a sword much too big for it to carry.

She waits for the creature to topple over. Then she lunges at it, pinning it with one knee, and pushes her estoc into its sunken chest.

Sirris is glad Gwynevere cannot see any of this: the scuffles, the bodies in their rocking chairs sprouting branches, the bundled corpses hanging from posts, the charred remnants of the evangelists’ pyre. The carnage is so old that the flies and the smell have gone. That, at least, is a blessing.

Sirris wishes she were as blind as Gwynevere, and not only to the bodies, but to the ghosts. After that thrall with the flamberge, the hallucinations do not stop. Hodrick is everywhere. He is never fully visible, just a purple glow on the edge of Sirris’s vision, disappearing as soon as she looks at it. Amalie never reacts to it. This phantom is of Sirris’s own making.

All too soon, they emerge on the wide avenue leading up to the courtyard where the greatwood once stood. The misshapen stone steps seem to shrink beneath Sirris’s feet, bearing her without effort to the top.

And she is simply there, at the precipice. The pit yawns before her, exuding the musk of wet earth. There are no ghosts here. The pit is a phantom unto itself.

It pulls.

Unbidden, Sirris’s heart begins to hammer. She is not ready. She will never be ready. If she waits until she is ready she will not find peace.

Behind her, as if from very far away, Amalie says, “Stay back, my lady. There’s a hole here.”

“I sense it,” Gwynevere says, uneasy. “Troubled souls linger here. Many souls.”

Of course they do. Grandfather made a mausoleum of this place. 

Sirris sets and resets her grip on her estoc. It never feels right; her hands are trembling too much. That’s just as well. It’s not as if she can kill a memory with a sword.

“What lieth below?” Gwynevere asks.

“A ghost,” Sirris says. “I thought him laid to rest. Bernice showed me otherwise. He lives in me still.”

Amalie is at Sirris’s side at once, clasping her wrist. “Are you going down there? I’ll go with you.”

“And leave Lady Gwynevere alone? Don’t be foolish.” Sirris is relieved to find she can still be stern with her heart pounding. That must be a good sign.

“But how are you going to get back up?”

“Grandfather kept homeward bones in the pit for that purpose.”

The words scrape past Sirris’s teeth. She does not want to say them. By all the gods, she wants Amalie with her!

“If this ghost is of thy mind, Knight Sirris, it cannot imperil me,” Gwynevere says. “Might I accompany thee in thy descent, as thy healer?”

“Oh, my lady.” 

Sirris is too stunned to speak further. Gwyndolin always said his elder sister had a will to match Gwyn’s, but Sirris never expected such courage. How strong and selfless this woman is even to think of plunging into the dark at Sirris’s side! This is not a goddess reclining on a couch; that much is certain. Time has tempered the Princess of Sunlight. 

She wants to say yes, wants it so much it threatens to tear her in two. She might stand a chance if she took Amalie and Gwynevere down the pit with her. They both know what it is to live with ghosts.

But duty is duty.

Overcome, Sirris does the only thing she can think of: she kneels.

“You are most gracious and brave,” she says, “but I cannot allow you to descend the pit. I promised your brother I would see you safely to Irithyll. I will not place you in any danger, however slight.”

Amalie glares at Sirris. “That’s it? You’re going down there alone? After everything we’ve been through, you’re going without me?”

Sirris digs her hand into the dirt. Give me strength, she begs. Whether of Amalie or Gwyndolin she does not know.

“I must.”

“And you call me a fool.”

Amalie pulls Sirris roughly up and grabs one of her hands, arranging their palms so Amalie’s is above Sirris’s. A tiny black sprite, a raindrop of dark, wells out of Amalie’s hand and sinks into Sirris’s open palm. Its touch is cold, but not unpleasantly so. It is a clarifying sensation, like water splashed on her face after a long training session.

“Now give me yours,” Amalie says.

Sirris’s humanity answers Amalie’s of its own accord. Without conscious thought, a sprite rises from Sirris’s hand and dissolves into her junior’s.

She knows what this means. Sharing humanity enables a silent communication that Sirris has always found unsettling. She does not like having someone else’s voice in her mind.

And yet, this time, she is grateful for it.

Amalie grins her cheeky, feral grin. “There. Now I can talk to you while you’re in the pit.”

Through her dread, Sirris grins back. “And I know you will.”


~~~

Yorshka holds her letter tight all the way back to the Erdtree Sanctuary. 

She is thinking strange thoughts.

Not of Gwynhael, who is carrying her (though his arms are lovely and strong). Not of Eira and Morgott and Gwyndolin, who keep looking at her with concern.

She is thinking about her mother and Friede.

Friede, Priscilla, the greatwolf. They are lines in Yorshka’s mind, intersecting at the tower.

Something will be born there. It may even be her.

That thought frightens her. She buries her head in Gwynhael’s shoulder.

She is still hiding when her companions reach the Erdtree Sanctuary, so she does not see Miquella enter the foyer. She only looks up when Gwyndolin says, “Miquella. Thou wert false with me.”

The golden god sweeps them all with his beautiful, inscrutable eyes. His gaze lingers longest on Gwyn’s two sons.

Then he folds his hands primly and says, “Ah.”

Chapter Text

“Why didst thou conceal my brother’s presence from me?” 

Gwyndolin is angry, and as always, it makes him cold. Miquella’s impassive face is not helping. Never has Gwyndolin wanted so much to shake him and force out some sign of feeling, some sliver of the rawness he displayed when he burned the Haligtree. Miquella was fallible then, as vulnerable to his expectations falling apart as anyone else. That is what has happened to Gwyndolin today. He wishes Miquella would share in it with him and stop being quite so perfect.

Of course, the golden god remains as collected as ever. “I thought learning of Gwynhael’s condition would distress you. When you brought Yorshka to us, you were so overwrought you could scarce speak. I did not think it wise to tax you with more ill tidings so soon.”

“How very like my father thou art.”

“Lin…”

“I do not require protection. How many times must I tell thee I am not a doll?”

“I know you aren’t.”


“Then treat me thus! However weak m -” Gwyndolin catches himself before he can say mine heart. “Thine intent is kind, I know. Yet I would have thee look upon me as thou didst when I learnt to walk. So certain thou wert that I would reach the end of the corridor - more certain than I myself.”

A nasty, truthful voice inside him says, Yorshka asketh the same of thee.

To Gwyndolin’s surprise, Miquella bows his head a fraction. “Perhaps I overstepped my bounds. Your pardon, friend.”

Gwyndolin does not have the grace to give it. Yorshka would have. “How wilt thou heal Gwynhael’s mind? I am told thou hast knowledge of such matters.”

“Eager as ever,” Miquella murmurs with a gentle smile. “Is Gwynhael ready to undertake such healing?”

Gwynhael, still cradling Yorshka in his arms, nods. “Fain would I do so sooner rather than late.”

Miquella does not approve; that is plain from the flatness of his gaze, but he does not argue. “Very well. I will tell you my thoughts, Lin, but first I must insist you all come inside and eat. ’Tis past midday.”

When Gwyndolin makes an impatient noise, Morgott’s hand comes down on his shoulder. “To fortify the body is to fortify the spirit,” the Omen King pronounces. “In this Miquella is correct.”

Eira looks up at Morgott. “Do you always have to be so practical?”

“Someone must do so. Thou wilt not.”

They stare each other down for a few seconds, and then they both begin to grin. That is enough to dispel the tension and carry them all across the threshold into the Erdtree Sanctuary.

After gathering some food from the kitchens, they return to the foyer and sit down on the roots protruding from the paving stones with plates of bread, meat, cheese, and fruit balanced on their laps. This attracts the sanctuary’s six Omen children, who always seem to know when a meal is being eaten no matter where they are. Some of them steal up on swift little feet and snatch bits of the adults’ food. They don’t get much before Morgott sends them away with a reminder that they know where the kitchens are and are quite capable of asking the cooks for some lunch. There is no anger in his voice. For these little ones, he blunts his scoldings.

Gwyndolin cannot bring himself to be irritated with the children either. They were so kind to him when he was ill, and it isn’t their fault the habits by which they survived the Shunning Grounds are so ingrained. They aren’t used to food that never runs out, that’s all. He ruffles their thick silver hair as they go to show them he isn’t upset. 

Ragna alone takes nothing from anyone’s plate. She has always been better-mannered and more serious than the rest of her cohort. She lingers in the foyer when her friends have all gone, looking between Gwyndolin, Gwynhael, and Yorshka. Then she goes to each of them in turn and sits at their feet with her head resting on their legs. Her horns glow with all the many hues of life. Gwyndolin watches his brother and sister’s faces relax as Ragna pushes back their pain and fear. She comes to Gwyndolin last. With the warm weight of her head against him, his helplessness fades into the distance. For a little while he forgets to be afraid.

The Omen children soon return with plates of their own and settle down in a cluster to eat. They keep a wary distance from Gwynhael at first, as they do with all strangers. Only when Gwynhael holds out his hand for them to sniff do they relax. Perhaps they smell the dragons on him and sense a kindred spirit. Their fur stops standing on end; their warning growls fall silent. Soon they let Gwynhael touch their hair.

Gwynhael is delighted in his unwonted, solemn way. “Yet more little dragons,” he observes.

“Such is our age,” Morgott says, without a trace of shame.

He speaks of the Crucible very differently now, Gwyndolin notes: like a well of strength from which he can draw at need rather than a beast to be restrained. A shimmer runs through his tail and horns as he speaks, a small but meaningful sign that he is no longer repressing his power.

“’Tis a fine age,” Gwynhael says. “I believe I shall grow very fond of this city when I am well.”

Gwyndolin catches his eye across the Erdtree mosaic in the floor. When, not if.

Even with all the wrongness in Gwynhael’s posture and voice, this is the most peaceful meal Gwyndolin has had in a long time. Eira chatters about the Crucible thorns incantation Morgott performed on Archdragon Peak, Miquella announces that his tree has grown past the cave where it was planted and broken the surface, and the Omen children dance. They are practicing an acrobatic maneuver, perhaps of their own invention, that involves a great deal of standing on each other’s shoulders. They seem to be trying to form a shape, though Gwyndolin cannot tell what it is. Mostly they just tumble to the floor in giggling heaps. Their yipping laughter is its own music.

“Is this a new battle art of which I am unaware?” Morgott asks, eyebrow raised not with scorn, but affection.

All six children nod earnestly.

When the meal is over and the little Omens have picked every last crumb from their plates, Miquella claps his hands for silence. Every eye in the foyer turns to him. Even the children, now clustered around Yorshka so she can scratch their heads, stop jostling. Of all Miquella’s formidable powers, Gwyndolin envies this one the most: the ability to command attention without saying a word.

Miquella flicks back his hair. “Are you determined to recover yourself as soon as possible?”

Gwynhael glances at Gwyndolin. “I would return to my brother’s side at once if I may. I have been too long away.”

“And you, Lin?” Miquella asks.


Gwyndolin knows he will not convince his elder brother to wait. Once Gwynhael gets an idea into his mind, that is that. That aspect of his character, at least, has not changed. And Gwyndolin cannot deny how much he wants Gwynhael back, too. Seeing him again left such a powerful emptiness in Gwyndolin’s heart that he wonders how he endured all those years of duty without his siblings beside him. He yearns for them more than ever now that they are so close. How wonderful it would be to laugh with them and hear their stories of places he has never seen.

“I am ready,” he says. “Tell me how I may -” 

He almost says “be of use”, that phrase he so hates to hear from Yorshka. If he means to help his sister grow, he must provide a positive example for her to follow.

“Tell me how I may assist thee,” he says instead. Better. 

An unreadable smile touches Miquella’s lips. “I must ask you to trust me.”

Thus Miquella reveals a plan to which it seems Gwynhael and Eira are already privy: he means to send Gwyndolin into his brother’s dreams, or rather, as Miquella calls it, “the landscape of his soul.” Because Gwyndolin once shared a close a bond with his eldest sibling, Miquella believes he stands the best chance of slipping inside the fortress Gwynhael has built around his memories and breaking down the walls. Gwynhael’s gates are shut tight, Miquella explains, but for Gwyndolin they may open just a crack. And that is all they need.

“I’m afraid this will require me to lift your soul from your body,” Miquella adds, almost as an afterthought. He does not sound the least bit afraid or apologetic. He might as well have said he forgot to buy something at the market. “Temporarily, of course.”

Temporary or not, soul projection is advanced magic, and disastrous if done wrong. Although Gwyndolin has studied the method, he has never attempted it himself. He came very close to it after Aldrich ate his snakes, but he was too weak with cold, sickness, and hunger. Since then he has never again been desperate enough to try. 

Besides that, Miquella’s plan is all too reminiscent of their stand against the Formless Mother. Gwyndolin did not pit his soul against the outer god, but Morgott and Eira did, and their tales of spiritual warfare are as harrowing as they are thrilling. Gwyndolin does not doubt that had they failed to overpower the Mother of Truth, their souls would have been lost in that other realm.

“Is there danger?” he asks. “Tell me true.”

“Very little. I know this magic well. I have projected my own soul several times - more than I ought, Eira would say. And I do not think your brother will resist us in so violent a manner as the Formless Mother. Do not fear. I shall be with you. No, the real danger…” 

Miquella addresses himself to Gwynhael now. 

“…is what comes after. Memories have weight. To recover so many at once, some of which may be unpleasant, will strain your mind. You may find yourself confused, overcome. It may be weeks or months before you are yourself once more.”

Gwynhael’s eyes narrow. Gwyndolin looks on in sympathy. He remembers how he reacted to the revelation that his own recovery would take months: he became petulant, attempted to walk, collapsed three paces from his bed, and sat there on the floor until Ursa came to set him right. He cannot imagine Gwynhael receiving the news with any better humor.
 
“Knowing all this,” Miquella says, “do you still wish to proceed? You might ease your passage back to yourself by allowing more of your memories to return on their own ere we open the floodgates. A drizzle is more endurable than a storm.”

Gwynhael shakes his head. In his face Gwyndolin sees the stubborn will that kept him from going insane all these years. He is the image of his father in that regard. Gwyn, too, was still coherent after ages of burning in the kiln. Still capable of recognizing Gwyndolin and gently touching his face. 

“I fear no storm,” Gwynhael says. 

“Bold words,” Miquella says, looking at Gwynhael with those eyes that see right down to the heart, “but this is not the sort of storm you have weathered before.”

“I shall weather it nonetheless.”

Miquella holds his gaze a while, assessing, measuring. Then he folds his hands in his lap. “Well, you will not be alone in your healing, at any rate. That is a gift.”

Gwyndolin sees a darkness pass across Miquella’s face and wonders if he is thinking of Malenia, his own fierce sibling with her own tempest to endure.

Miquella tosses one of his braids over his shoulder. His darkness goes with it. “Shall we begin?”

~~~

The Omen children lead Yorshka back to Ursa’s infirmary. There, without ever asking permission, they patter over to the cupboards and pull out as many blankets as they can carry. According to Miquella, it’s best to keep the body covered while the soul goes wandering: deep unconsciousness lowers body temperature. 

Ursa does not ask what is going on. She must be able to tell when to intervene and when to wait for her charges to call upon her.

In the foyer they spread the blankets on the floor, making pallets for Gwynhael, Gwyndolin, and Miquella. Yorshka does her part, though she cannot accomplish much with her one unbound arm. By this time Miquella is holding two white lilies, drooping on their stems and glistening wet.

“Are you prepared?” he asks Gwyn’s sons once more.

They look at each other and nod.

“Very well. Lie down and be still.”

Gwynhael and Gwyndolin wrap themselves in their cocoons of blankets. Gwyndolin meets Yorshka’s gaze and holds it for a long moment as if to say, Be not afraid.

“I shall endeavor to cause thee no undue difficulty,” Gwynhael says as Miquella hands him and Gwyndolin lilies.

“You will have no say in the matter, I’m afraid,” Miquella says. His softness has fallen away. He is all edges and focus now. “None of us can command our unconscious minds.”

After this he utters no more words that Yorshka can hear. He must be doing something, though, because the lilies begin to exhale purple mist like pollen. Within seconds her two brothers’ eyelids have dropped shut. Miquella kneels between them with one hand on Gwynhael’s brow and the other on Gwyndolin’s. He bends his head and closes his own eyes. Moments later, Gwyndolin’s body shudders horribly and goes limp.

Yorshka stifles a gasp. With the lily between his clasped hands, Gwyndolin could be laid out for his funeral. 

She cannot bear to look at him. She looks instead at the Omen children, who have arranged themselves like sentinels around the three pallets, and at Miquella, who is watching Yorshka in turn.

“Is Lin dead?” she whispers. She hardly dares speak the words, lest she make them true.

Miquella does not answer.

“Tell me,” Yorshka insists.

“He…is and is not. His body remains among the living, but it is empty. There is no spark. His soul is within Gwynhael’s now.” Miquella cups Yorshka’s cheek. “He will come back, I promise you. Lie down beside him, child. He will wake more gently if you are near.”

Yorshka cannot tell if this is truth or pity. 

Bereft of anything else to do, feeling useless yet again, she stretches herself out on Gwyndolin’s blankets, on her uninjured right side. She curls into him like she used to do when his sun made him ill. He is still breathing, but very slowly, hardly enough to lift his chest. If nothing else, Yorshka can keep him warm.

On the other side of the room, she hears Morgott’s heavy footfalls as he kneels beside Gwynhael. Then Miquella lies down between the two brothers. He holds no lily of his own. Apparently he can enter this dream-trance unaided by magic. 

It takes him less than a minute. He closes his eyes, his breathing slows, and his face changes, becoming rounder and more feminine. His hair pales almost to white tinged with lavender and violet at the ends. Then he too twitches hard and goes still.

Yorshka is not the only one quietly horrified by this process of soul projection. Eira too is uneasy. She lies down beside Miquella with her head on his chest, stroking his cheeks and looking at him like a part of herself that is gone beyond her reach. The worry in her eyes is cutting.

“He always goes where I can’t follow,” Eira murmurs.

“And thou goest where he cannot,” Morgott answers. The Omen King’s voice is soft - not, Yorshka thinks, for the sleepers’ sake. “Thou’rt strong of heart and body, he of mind and soul. Each may accomplish what the other cannot. Together ye be whole.”

“I suppose I never thought of it that way. Morgott…I didn't take you for a romantic.”

“Perish the thought.”

Eira chuckles. She folds her hand over Miquella’s and kisses his cheeks, whispering something meant for him alone. Yorshka makes out two phrases: “call on me” and “come back to me.”

Eira does not go to sleep. Her eyes follow every line of Miquella’s face, up and down, like she is afraid it will blur into fog and disappear forever if she looks away. Her body fits perfectly into his. Yorshka wonders if it always did, or if they molded themselves to each other over time. Can bodies change like that? Perhaps only if two people are very close.

And Eira and Miquella are close. Yorshka has heard many of their tales. They are fondest of retelling what they call their beginning, when Eira dragged Miquella out of a rotten swamp in the depths of the Haligtree and held him while he wrestled with his grief. It was the first time he came to her for comfort. Yorshka likes that story because even though it is sad to begin with, it ends with her dear friends holding each other so close they can feel each other’s breath. “Like butterflies in our hair,” Miquella always describes it.

They have had other adventures since then: their conflict with the Formless Mother, when Eira and Morgott risked their own souls to distract the outer god in Miquella’s body, and of course the Haligtree fire, that day for which Yorshka is forever grateful because it tipped Gwyndolin over the edge into Dark. Yorshka knows there must be more tales she has not heard, darker ones, losses Eira and Miquella endured on their way to the Elden Throne that they do not want to talk about. They allude to such things sometimes: sidelong, not looking at them for too long.

Is it in the midst of hardship that one comes to know a loved one’s face as well as one’s own? Has anyone ever looked at Yorshka that way? Did Priscilla memorize Yorshka’s features in those terrible moments before she pushed her daughter from the tower? Or did her mind turn as red as her body, consumed by her fatal wound? No, Priscilla must remember Yorshka, even beyond death. How else would she have appeared in Yorshka’s visions?

If that really was Priscilla at all.

Yorshka nestles nearer to Gwyndolin. Some of the lilies’ pollen is still in the air, and her body is too worn out from her injury to resist it. She falls asleep thinking of her mother.

~~~

Gwyndolin open his eyes to a field of blades.

A plain of hard-packed dirt stretches out on every side. It is utterly flat, without a single hillock or dip, and it is littered with weapons. Swords, spears, and axes, all driven into the ground. Their original colors have long since faded. The ground has turned red with their rust.

Seeking anything to break the monotony, Gwyndolin turns to his right and finds…not Miquella. Not quite. In his place is a woman with rain-gray eyes and pale hair curling about her face as if damp with dew. A purple flower is pinned near her temple. She wears an airy gray gown with skirts that resemble nodding petals. Her face shares Miquella’s fine features, but on her they are sweeter somehow, more innocent. She moves like there is mist beneath her feet rather than dirt.

The woman looks at him as if she wonders why he is staring. 

“Miquella?” Gwyndolin ventures.

The woman’s eyes widen a little. Then she looks down, pulling her hair forward so it curtains her face. “Oh, of course! I beg your pardon. We have never met.” 

“Thou wearest a ring of reversal?”

“What is a… No matter. ‘Tis nothing of the sort. I am Trina, Miquella’s other self. I walk in dreams for him.”

Gwyndolin hears nothing of Miquella in Trina’s high, soft voice, nor does he see anything of Miquella in her behavior. Trina seems shyer than her counterpart, and even more ethereal. Gwyndolin half expects her to dissolve like a passing dream when he looks away. And yet, her presence here does not shock him at all. Duality is common in the Lands Between. Morgott is both man and animal. Eira is both living and dead. It comes as no surprise that Miquella has two contrasting aspects as well. If Gwyndolin had the same, maybe his other self would have been brave enough to leave Anor Londo.

“Thou shalt be my guide?” he asks.

“I...will try. This is not my dream. I do not know its ways.”

Gwyndolin surveys the endless plain. That his brother’s inner landscape is a battlefield does not surprise him, but there is no sign of the barriers behind which Miquella said Gwynhael sealed his memories. There are no walls at all, no gates, no locks, no labyrinths or foggy woods. Nothing that could conceal or protect Gwynhael’s most precious pieces. If the weapons hold memories, there isn’t even any wind to sweep the dust over them. The air is dry and cool and smells of metal.

“I see no fortress here,” Gwyndolin remarks.

“Dreams are strange. They rarely take the forms we expect.”

Trina produces, seemingly from the air, a torch with braided patterns carved into its sides. Its flame burns pale purple. Trina breathes on the fire and it swells out in all directions, across the plain and up into the twilit sky. Near the ground it sputters out after traveling a short distance, but in the sky it continues to burn, up and up. Stranger still, it appears to be encountering numerous unseen objects. In many places it splits around something solid, licking at the sides.

Disconcerted, Gwyndolin clasps Trina’s wrist.

“Ah... Miquella was right,” she says.

“I see nothing.”

“Watch.”

And indeed, dark shapes are fading into view wherever the fire touches, arrayed in ascending rings, higher and higher, as if they were circling an invisible column when they froze in these positions. Their wings are folded and their long necks stretched upwards.

Dragons. Scores of them, hanging in the air like whales slumbering in the deep.

Gwyndolin tilts his head back, walks backwards as far as he dares, and still he cannot crane his neck enough to see the highest dragon. He can only stand there with his lips parted in awe, taking in the magnitude of Gwynhael’s defenses. This living barricade must have taken centuries to build. No wonder Gwynhael cannot reach his own memories! The dragon that holds them (what else?) is no doubt at the very top of the column. It must be as high as the sun by now, lofted there by its fellows, a new dragon added beneath it with every age that passed Gwynhael by. He did not sink into himself and lose himself in darkness, as a hollow might. He flew higher, away from himself.

Oh, my brother. What despair threatened thee, to warrant such protection?

Despair is coiling around Gwyndolin’s chest as well. “This is not a gate I may open.”

Trina puts a slender finger to her lips and hums. “No. Miquella...did not imagine far enough.”

“How are we to reach them?” Even the lowest dragon is hundreds of feet up. Are they meant to build a ladder out of all these discarded weapons and pray it does not tip as they climb? 

“There is a way,” Trina muses. “We can take the form of a dragon. It is one of our divine forms. We wore it to burn the Formless Mother’s...wound-beast.” She shivers.

Gwyndolin did not see this battle for himself, but Eira has told the tale enough times for him to imagine it. Ignissax, Morgott named that divine creature. Four iridescent wings and flaming breath all the colors of life. 

“Couldst thou take such a form in this place?” Gwyndolin asks.

“We could…” Trina turns a slow circle, lifting the hem of her skirt and letting it flare around her, like she is getting ready to take flight. “…but ‘twould certainly disturb this dream, and they…” She points up at the sky. “…will not be so quiet then.”

The warning only deepens Gwyndolin’s pessimism. Even in this soul-realm, he will be no match for an armada of dragons. “We must fight them all?”

Trina is still circling. When she turns back to Gwyndolin, her face is grave. In her is all the sadness Miquella keeps hidden. “In dreams we fight with our wills, not our swords. I am afraid...violence can still be done. To die in soul is worse than to die in body. I know this. I felt it when he left me.”

That last sentence contains histories at which Eira has only ever hinted, but that is the least of Gwyndolin’s worries. He watches Trina turn with rising anger. He wants to grab her and make her look him in the eyes. “Miquella gave me to understand the danger was but little!”

“Sometimes he finds it kinder to lie. He wants to save, you see. He has always wanted to save. He...will do anything for the chance. He promised to bring your brother back to you, and bring him back he shall.”

Gwyndolin is accustomed to being the deceiver, not the deceived. He does not like how small it makes him feel. It serves him right, after all those years of manipulating Undead into linking the flame. Nonetheless, he will have some choice words for Miquella whether he saves Gwynhael or not.

“Please do not be vexed with him. He could not have known what awaited us. All souls are different,” Trina goes on. “He would say it does not matter. You are here, and the thing must be done one way or another.”

Gwyndolin hears his own brutal practicality in that statement. It snuffs the arguments on his tongue. He would have done the same in Miquella’s place - has done the same for his own causes. 

Trina makes one more slow turn and stops with her hands folded demurely in front of her. “So…shall I?”

Gwyndolin looks up at the column of dragons. He thinks of Gwynhael, so somber and uncertain, so wrong. This may be his only chance to make it right.

“Do as thou must,” he says.

Trina smiles and dips him a curtsy. “Stand clear.”

~~~

Yorshka has had this dream before. This attic room, with piles of books strewn on the floor and dust an inch thick on every surface, is where she went when first she dreamt of her mother. The dragon girl who once crouched on the table beneath a blanket, sketching in the dust, is not there now. There is only Priscilla. She is sitting on the floor, as she was when Yorshka saw her in the corvian settler’s house. Her fluffy white tail is folded around her legs. She is silent and unmoving, just as before. She does not lift her bowed head as Yorshka enters the room.

Not so many days ago, that would have sent her into tears. Now, Yorshka is less and less certain that the woman before her is Priscilla at all. She first suspected this when she failed to convince Friede to burn the painting: that Priscilla was naught but a figment of her imagination, concocted to give her the purpose she so desperately wanted. With Priscilla, she was her brother’s protector, given warnings and guidance from beyond the grave so that she might keep Gwyndolin safe. Without Priscilla, she was a naïve girl with little knowledge of the world beyond Irithyll. 

Except none of that was true. Priscilla gave Yorshka no guidance once she crossed into Ariandel. All the things she did there - making peace with the greatwolf, soothing the corvians, talking with Friede, and yes, protecting Gwyndolin - she did on her own. She made all those choices and carried them through. She is still carrying them through, holding her hand out to Friede.

Yorshka approaches her mother, her tail leaving trails in the dust, and sits down. 

“I will return to Ariandel, Mother,” she says, though she knows by now that Priscilla will not answer. “I know not what calleth me there, but I will stand at our tower and learn, I hope, what I may become.”

Priscilla does not move or open her eyes. She does not tell Yorshka what awaits her at the tower. Maybe Yorshka knows it herself even if she doesn’t know it yet. Maybe Priscilla is and always has been the things Yorshka knew in her heart but did not believe unless she heard them from her mother. A projection she made to compensate for her lack of confidence. In that case, all the visions and warnings she received these past months were her own. She just had so little faith in herself that she could not accept her foresight as hers. 

This thought fills Yorshka both with profound sorrow and buds of possibility.

“I will be all I may be,” she tells Priscilla - tells herself. “I will be.”

She leans forward and embraces this embodiment of her insecurity, burying her face in that fluffy white fur for what may be the last time on this side of death. For a long time she holds tight. The tighter she holds, the more something loosens inside her. And then all at once she knows why this illusion that wears Priscilla’s face has been silent of late. 

She had nothing to say that Yorshka could not say for herself. Yorshka is outgrowing her.

She should be happy, she knows, yet this is the last vestige of Priscilla she has, even though it probably isn’t real. If she lets go of this ghost she has made, when will she see her mother again? Will she see her at all? Despite herself, she begins to sob. Tears drip into the illusion’s white fur.

Amidst her sadness comes a single clear thought: she must be Priscilla now.

No, that isn’t right. She must be herself now. Whatever remained of the girl Sulyvahn locked in a steeple is burning with Ariandel. Something new must begin. Something all her own.

“Go to sleep now,” she says. She imagines Gwyndolin told his father the same thing, in the kiln. “Goodnight.”

Yorshka knows what she must do. Everyone will tell her it is too soon, but they will always tell her that. She cannot listen to them forever.

When she wakes, she will go to Irithyll.

~~~

Flames swallow Trina’s body, a single surge from her skirts to her head. In an instant she is gone. The heat forces Gwyndolin back. These are not the purple flames of sleep, but the sacred flames Morgott sometimes breathes in the colosseum: red-gold with a core of endless brilliant hues. Gwyndolin has to shield his face as the wind and heat whip his clothes. 

When the dust settles and Gwyndolin blinks the tears from his eyes, a dragon stands before him. It is a monster, at least as big as Gransax. Its four wings are thrown wide and its scales shine red-gold. A seal of interwoven rings blazes on its chest, encircled by twisting roots and split down the middle by a flowering helix. The creature radiates divinity so powerful it makes the air quiver. It fills Gwyndolin’s nostrils with the same sharp smell as pyromancy. The scent of wildness.

The sight of the beast sweeps Gwyndolin’s mind clear of all but one shaky thought: Gwynhael, would that thou couldst see this!

The dragon lowers its huge horned head and nudges Gwyndolin’s shoulder. Its nearness makes his teeth rattle. Its eyes are Trina’s gray.

Climb up. I will bear you to the summit, it says into Gwyndolin’s mind. Its voice is the myriad voices of every living thing, at the core of which is Trina’s own. The ground trembles as it lowers itself down.

This is not how Gwyndolin imagined his first dragon flight, if he ever summoned the nerve to take one. He prefers to keep his feet on the ground (it must be the serpent in him). He reaches for one of the dragon’s horns with a shaking hand, thinking to pull himself up that way.

Before he can set his grip, lightning cracks the sky with a bang that resounds deep in his chest. His heart skitters out of his control. All the dragons in the column unfurl their wings as one and shriek their rage.

Their roar is the first note of a storm. All at once the quiet plain is a gale. Clouds condense in seconds and release a pelting rain, stinging Gwyndolin’s face. The dragons all begin to circle, around and around in ever-tightening rings, as if an invisible monolith stands in their midst. Their motions are slow, but the threat is clear. By the time Gwyndolin and his guardian reach the top of the column, where the dragons are circling tightest, they will have no choice but to claw their way through.

It is time, says the voice that is and is not Trina’s. Open the way for us.

Gwyndolin looks helplessly at the divine beast, blinking against the rain. “How? What am I against such wrath?”

I told you. Dream battles are fought with the will, not with swords. All you see before you is but a manifestation of your brother’s mind. Speak to him. Tell him you are here. Make him recognize you. 

Gwyndolin opens his mouth to reply and inhales rain and windblown dust. Spitting, spluttering, he tries to call out Gwynhael’s name. The wind slams into him like a vast hand, snatching his voice and breath. He staggers against his dragon, bent double against the storm.

“But he knew me!” he cries over the howling wind. “Why this anger?”

He knew you in waking. This is a lower plane of consciousness. ’Tis instinctive and animal. ’Twill be more difficult to reach Gwynhael here.

Gwyndolin’s feet scrabble without purchase on the hard ground. He has to wedge them between the dragon’s claws to keep from tumbling away into the storm. Then, without dignity or grace, he hauls himself up onto the beast’s back, hand over hand, hooking his fingers beneath the edges of scales. He is grateful that his dream body is stronger than his real one. With a thought, he conjures serpent legs for himself and uses them as anchors while he drags himself into a sitting position. 

When he is finished, he feels foolish rather than mighty. He makes a vain attempt to smooth down his wind-tossed hair. If he is ever so halfwitted as to ride a dragon again, he really must learn how to mount one first.

The divine beast spreads both pairs of wings. The wind screams in protest. Gwyndolin presses himself flat to the dragon’s neck to avoid the worst of the rain. He is gripping its horns so tight his hands are white.

Call to him, it says. You will reach him.

Miquella is always so certain. In this moment Gwyndolin both loves and hates him for that.

He did ask Miquella not to treat him like a doll, didn’t he?

“Thou’rt impossible,” he says through gritted teeth. He does not know whether he is speaking to Miquella or Gwynhael. 

Bracing himself for another mouthful of rain, he takes a breath.

Chapter Text

“Gwynhael!”

The nearest dragon roars, a breath not of fire, but of wind. The gust hits Gwyndolin square in the chest and rips the breath from his lungs. Rain drives into his face, blinding him. It is all he can do to cling to Trina’s back, fingers and serpent legs hooked around the edges of her scales. Beneath him, Trina throws open her four wings and rudders hard. Her huge draconic body bucks against the gale and almost shakes Gwyndolin loose. While he struggles for purchase with his numb hands, Trina fights her way out of the column of circling dragons and retreats to where the air is a little calmer.

“What am I to do?” Gwyndolin cries over the wind. They have been trying to breach the dragons’ ranks for what seems like hours, yet they never get much beyond the lowest few before they are driven back. “They will not yield to me!”

You are a sorcerer, are you not? This is the realm of the mind. Nowhere is your magic stronger than here, Trina says, in that divine voice that is hers and Miquella’s and every living thing’s. She does not sound shy now. Make yourself someone Gwynhael will recognize.

Before Gwyndolin can think what this means, Trina plunges back into the storm.

Hold tight!

Gwyndolin presses himself to Trina’s back and prays.

With a mighty beat of all four wings, Trina propels herself up into the column of dragons. Her momentum sweeps her past the lowest few, who hurl gusts at her as she passes. She twists around each burst of wind, lashing her opponents with her tail. One of them snaps at her. It is so close Gwyndolin feels its hot, wet breath on his face. Trina wheels aside and flaps her wings at it. Her gale catches the beast unguarded and pushes it backwards out of the column.

In answer to this incursion, the clouds swallow what little remains of the light. The world now exists only in the flashes of lightning that illuminate the dragons’ silhouettes. Still Trina spirals up, dodging snarling jaws, pushing higher than ever before. Gwyndolin is helpless. He is caught in a nightmare of rushing air and teeth and claws.

At last Trina tilts, and Gwyndolin slides off her neck, snakes and all. For a few seconds of blind terror, he falls. Then he lands, bruised and disoriented, on stone. The next flash of lightning reveals that he is on a remnant of a building: a broken chunk of floor and bits of two walls forming a corner. It is suspended in the sky without support. A piece of a tower, perhaps, that Gwynhael shattered to put his memories even further out of reach?

Gwyndolin has no time to take it in. Seconds later, Trina drops down beside him, human again, and shoves him into the nook between the two walls. The motion is too forceful to belong to such a gentle, reserved woman. Trina may be the dominant aspect here in the dream world, but it’s clear Miquella is working with and through her.

No sooner has she pressed Gwyndolin’s body against the stone than a dragon rips past them, buffeting their perch with a torrent of wind. Gwyndolin’s hair and clothes whip around him. His body skids inexorably sideways and Trina pushes him harder into the corner. He thinks he is screaming. He cannot hear it. Blind and breathless, all he can do is hold on.

He is still clutching Trina when the wind dies down. His cheeks are wet with more than rain. He cannot breathe and he does not want to move.

Trina clasps his face between her hands and tips it up to hers. With her pale hair streaming behind her, she is exquisite, marked by divinity as much as the dragons are. Miquella’s captivating aura shines through her softness.

“What do you look like in the memories your brother has recovered?” Trina asks. “Present him with something familiar.”

Gwyndolin does not know what Gwynhael has recovered. The two of them have hardly had a chance to talk! The only memory Gwynhael has mentioned was the day he injured Gwyndolin during that argument with their father. Gwynhael was banished soon afterwards, so that is likely his last clear image of his younger brother. What did Gwyndolin look like then? How old was he, and how did he dress?

He retreats into himself, dipping his hands beneath the surface of his magic. For once he needs no light from which to weave illusions; he can bend the fabric of the dream itself. It slips through his mind’s fingers like silk. Gwyndolin draws it around him, letting himself dwindle into someone smaller and younger. He settles a sheer veil over his head and crops his hair so it falls just past his jaw. He clothes himself in a white gown bound above his waist with a gold belt. Then, lifting his hand, he transforms the ruin on which he crouches into a white stone room with gold accents. He sets an arched window in the wall and sends summer light filtering through.

“Gwynhael!” he calls out. His voice is higher this time, a young person’s voice. “Gwynhael!”

See me. Know me. I am thy little dragon.

The wind slows. Around Gwyndolin’s island of light, the clouds part enough to let through a few drops of real sun.

“That’s the way…” Trina murmurs beside him.

My companion is Trina, aspect of Miquella, whom thou knowest as thine healer. Be not afraid. Let us pass. We seek to aid thee.

The scant sunshine reveals more chunks of masonry above, winding up and up amidst the dragons. As Gwyndolin watches, they begin to rearrange themselves. Clouds of dust sift down. With a great, low groaning, the ruins drift closer and closer to each other until they have formed a rough path.


Gwyndolin lets out his breath. He is not naïve enough to think he will be able to walk up that path unopposed, but it is a start. 

With one small, gloved hand he reaches back and finds Trina’s fingers. He stretches his serpents out and up towards the next bit of masonry. Takes a grip. Pulls Trina along behind him.

The ruins tremble as they step onto the next platform. The dragons circle above and below with growls in their throats, and the wind howls, a constant reminder that they are thousands of feet up in the sky. Trina has a silver arrow in her free hand, and Gwyndolin knows she will produce a bow should she feel the need. For now, she does not. Together they climb to another platform, and then another. Still the storm does not assail them. It seems Gwynhael is allowing them passage.

For how long, Gwyndolin wonders.

He gets his answer soon enough. He and Trina have climbed no more than ten blocks and are just rounding a curve in the trail when the ruin beneath them shakes as if it is about to fall out of the sky. Without warning, a blast of wind slams into them and knocks them off their feet. Gwyndolin and Trina press themselves flat to the heaving stone. The gale claws at their bodies.

Grasping the ruin with all six of his serpents, Gwyndolin forces himself up against the storm. It is like pushing against an immensely heavy object. He is shaking with exertion when he gains his knees, and he can rise no further than that. No matter: he just needs his hands free.

Between his palms, he conjures a cluster of the little white flowers that grew on the borders of Anor Londo’s gardens. As a child he used to pick them as gifts for his father and siblings. Gwyn patted him on the head and sent him off, but Gwynhael always took a few flowers and wrapped them with twine around the shaft of his swordspear. He said they were good-luck charms. He never lost a duel with his weapon thus adorned.

Now Gwyndolin holds the flowers close in an attitude of prayer. He dares not extend his arms lest he lose his balance, but he hopes Gwynhael recognizes what he is holding. He is trembling, like he used to when he stood before Gwyn. His heart is racing through his silks and he is panting open-mouthed, in an agony of vulnerability. A dragon sweeps by below and knocks him to one knee. Still he does not let go of the flowers. Head bowed, eyes squeezed shut, Gwyndolin waits for the wind to calm.

See me. Know me. Thou wert my champion. Now let me be thine.

The storm falters. The wind diminishes a little.

Let me be thine.

The ruin stops quaking. 

Gwyndolin waits until he is sure he will be able to stand without swaying. Only then does he tuck the flowers into his waistband and pull Trina up beside him.

“You have a gift for this,” the dream-saint says, pushing damp, tangled curls out of her face. “You might make a fine dreamwalker. Would you like to take my place and calm the Frenzied Flame a while?”

Gwyndolin laughs, a little delirious. “I dare not! I know not what I do!”

“That may be. You are doing well nonetheless.”

Gwyndolin looks up at the long, winding path of ruins ahead. His heart sinks. He still has so far to go, and he isn’t sure how long he can keep this up.

Gwynhael, must thou be so stubborn?

~~~

Yorshka wakes with a clear mind.

As always, she tends to Gwyndolin first. He is asleep beside her still, breathing ever so slowly, and he is cold. Yorshka tucks his blankets around him to keep him warm in her absence.

Lifting herself on her unbound arm, she meets Morgott’s eye first. He seems to know what she is planning, or else he sees it in her face. Perhaps he has known since he read Friede’s letter.

“I must go to Irithyll,” Yorshka says.

Morgott nods. “This is a matter of importance? Thine heart resteth upon it?”

“Yes.”

“Thou wilt be safe?”

“The Darkmoon Knights will be near me, and Dunstan and Siegward.”

“Come swiftly back, lest thy brother wake to find thee gone.”

That pricks Yorshka’s conscience a little. She wishes she didn’t have to sneak off like this, but were she to tell Gwyndolin her intent, he would try to stop her at best, forbid her to go at worst. Miquella would do the same. If nothing else, he would ask her all sorts of questions to determine whether she is healthy enough to travel. If Yorshka does not go while they are both asleep, she will lose a crucial opportunity.

She is not recovered from her injury; she knows that. But she doesn’t have to go far.

Yorshka glances at Eira. Her surrogate sister does not appear to have noticed a thing. Eira’s whole being is fixed on Miquella, her head on his chest and her hands twined with his. She offers no protest.

“Go with grace,” Morgott intones. To Yorshka it seems that this is not just a simple blessing, but advice as to how she must carry herself.

“I thank thee, sir,” she says. 

She tucks a loose blanket around her shoulders and touches the ring on her left hand. In a flash of purple magic, she is gone.

~~~

Friede is in Gwyndolin’s kitchen. She still isn’t used to that reality, although she spends much of her time here of late, helping Siegward prepare or preserve ingredients. Today she has a bowl of water-soaked beans in front of her, and she is pinching off their skins. Siegward says they make a fine base for all sorts of dishes and pair well with many different spices, vegetables, and greens. His passion for food is obvious and infectious. Where others might look upon the kitchen as a servant’s domain, for Siegward it is a noble place from which he dispenses sustenance and warmth.

Friede has lashed out at the onion knight with every cruelty she knows, more out of reflex than malice. Nothing has worked. She has determined that Siegward cannot be riled, discouraged, or hurt by any means she possesses, so she has stopped trying. Now she just lets him talk and hum. Friede has learned some of his melodies. She still isn’t bold enough to let him hear her humming along, but hum along she does, when Siegward is clattering around enough to cover her voice. 

Dunstan is with them today, with his own bowl of beans and pile of discarded skins. Siegward and Elisabeth are determined to convince him to accept Friede’s presence. They have partially succeeded. Dunstan throws Friede fewer suspicious glances than he used to. Sometimes he even relaxes enough to tap his foot in time with Siegward’s humming.

It’s a strange little fellowship they’ve built. It suits Friede well enough. If she must sit idle, she would rather do so in this kitchen than in Ariandel’s chapel, trying to ignore the growing smell of blood and the glances Vilhelm cast her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

(Friede does not want to think about what may have happened to him. Ariandel’s bloodflies are insatiable.)

Then, in the middle of this peaceful afternoon, Yorshka comes down the cellar steps. She is leaning on the wall with her right hand. Her left arm is bound in a sling, with bandages visible past the collar of her dress. A blanket is slipping off one shoulder. Her cheeks, pink with cold, are the only part of her face with any color. She is tired and wan, but Friede recognizes the hard light in her eyes. It is the same she bore when she came to the chapel and spoke with such fervor of Ariandel’s rot.

“Hello,” Yorshka says, a little breathless.

Friede’s breath hitches. She hoped her letter might have prepared her for this, but it did not. It hurts more than she thought it would to see Yorshka like this, unbroken and determined but so obviously unhealed. It is like looking at a ghost - or worse than that, because Yorshka is not dead. She has survived to bear the marks of her suffering. She is a living condemnation of all Friede’s worst qualities.

Friede’s lips part, but no words come. 

Before she can master herself, Dunstan scrapes his chair back and moves around the table to Yorshka’s side. “Don’t you touch her,” he mutters to Friede as he goes. 

Small chance of that. Friede would sooner put her hands into a fire than lay them upon that girl again. That right is lost to her. She does not know when she will earn it back.

Dunstan leads Yorshka to the hearth fire with his arm around her waist, sits her down, and adjusts the blanket around her shoulders. 

“What are you doing here, love?” he asks, in a soft voice Friede has only ever heard him use with Elisabeth. In an instant it transforms him from a surly warrior into a protective elder brother. “Are you all right? Is Lin all right?”

“Lin is with Lord Miquella, in Gwynhael’s dreams. They seek the memories he locked away.”

This makes as little sense to Dunstan as it does to Friede, judging by his raised brows. Nonetheless, he gets to the heart of the matter: “Lin and Miq don’t know you’re here.”

“Morgott let me go.”

“Morgott did?”

“I cannot remain long. I must return ere my brother waketh.”

“You should not be here at all,” says Siegward, pressing a mug of some hot drink he never seems to run out of into Yorshka’s hand. “You should be resting. I can see you aren’t yet well.”

Yorshka looks at him steadily over the rim of the mug. “’Tis important.”

Then Yorshka’s gaze meets Friede’s, and she loses control of her heart all over again. What is the matter with her? Friede has never been one to dwell in guilt!


“You’re not going to do something mad again, are you?” Dunstan asks, with concern rather than ridicule. 

“I wish to return to Ariandel,” Yorshka says. “I must stand atop my mother’s tower.”

“Why?”

“I…believe I shall know only when I am there.”

Dunstan’s dark brows lift higher, as if he is questioning Yorshka’s mental state. “If you want to pay your respects, I’ll go with you when you’re stronger.”

Yorshka touches his cheek and shakes her head. “Nay, dear Unkindled, not this time. I wish Lady Friede to accompany me, if it be her will.”

Every eye in the room turns on Friede, whose hands are frozen above her bowl of beans. Her breath catches again. She feels as if she is the one with a scythe though her body, not Yorshka. She might have expected something like this - in her letter, Friede did offer her blades in Yorshka’s defense - yet she finds she cannot answer. The thought of traveling alone with Yorshka, of taking that small, vulnerable body under her protection, is dizzying. 

“I, my lady?” she manages to say, stalling for time while she sorts herself out.  

It isn’t that Friede doubts her martial skill; that is unassailable. What she doubts is that there is enough goodness in her to fulfill the vow she made in her letter. Ariandel is burning. Is she willing to dare those flames, to put her life at risk for Yorshka’s sake? She should have thought of this when she wrote the letter, but really, what could she offer in exchange for her life but her life itself? Nothing else would do. She just thought she would have more time to prepare. All this is happening too fast.

“Aye. Thou,” Yorshka says with a gentle, terrible finality. 

“Why?” Friede asks. Her voice is tight. It shames her.

“Thou knowest Ariandel better than any here.”

That is not why Yorshka wants Friede to accompany her. Friede can see it in Yorshka’s face, which has changed since last they met. The sweetness and the grace remain, but some of the innocence is gone. The hand Yorshka has extended to Friede isn’t open anymore: there is a test in it. This invitation to Ariandel is a chance for Friede to rectify her failings. To be selfless, to be brave. To find a home and purpose not in the painted world, but in the service of another. As Yorshka’s defender.

Is that what Friede wants? There will be a new painted world one day; she could always try to seize it for her own. But if she pledges herself to Yorshka, she cannot claim the new creation without betraying the girl to whom she owes her life.

“She almost killed you and Lin,” Dunstan bursts out, sparing Friede the trouble of coming up with an answer. “You’re not going anywhere with her.”

Yorshka folds her free arm across her chest. “I am not a child to be commanded thus.”

Dunstan has no response to that. He turns to Friede and says with a sort of desperate spite, “You can’t go back to Ariandel. It’s on fire.”

“As I am keenly aware, sir.”

“You’re afraid of fire.”

Friede closes her eyes. If ‘twere easy, ‘twould be no fit payment.

~~~

Eira almost does not notice when Yorshka reappears in the Erdtree Sanctuary. She brings with her the smells of fire and food. 

Eira is too preoccupied to wonder what Yorshka has been doing. A faint crease has appeared in Miquella’s brow, and he is getting colder. Whatever is going on in the dream, it is difficult.

She tucks herself closer to her husband. Take my strength, love. Take it and come back to me.

~~~

They climb on, block by block. Soon the air grows so cold that the rain turns to snow. Gwyndolin cannot feel his body. Trina helps him scramble up and across the gaps between each ruin. Many times they have to cling to the stones while the dragons buffet them with icy wind. They rest when they can, Gwyndolin’s child body huddled against Trina’s, and she shares with him what little warmth she has.

Every so often Gwynhael’s subconscious mind starts to reject them again. The ruins shift and threaten to fall away. In these moments Gwyndolin conjures familiar artifacts to calm the storm. His magic is unbounded here in this realm of the mind. He can make anything: the bow Gwynhael gave him, with wyvern feathers and beads dangling from its limbs; the paper dragons Gwyndolin made to stand guard on Gwynhael’s desk. Once, Gwyndolin even reads a passage from a children’s book Gwynhael read him when he was ill. It recounts how the Lord of Sunlight learned to wield lightning. It was Gwyndolin’s favorite story. He does not raise his voice above the wind. He lets the wind soften for him instead.

Only once does Trina summon her bow and fire on a dragon who is getting too close. Purple mist scatters from the point of impact, and the dragon plummets out of the sky. Otherwise, Gwyndolin’s islands of light and familiarity quiet the winds long enough for him and Trina to proceed. Slowly he realizes that he can do this after all. He is doing it, even though he is shivering so hard that Trina has to hold him up.

The storm abruptly stops when they reach the highest platform. The air is still. The clouds part and the sun shines down from a clear blue sky. Below, the dragons fold their wings. Ahead is the largest dragon of all, every bit as large as Miquella’s divine form. For now it is asleep, curled up across several chunks of stone with its head on its claws. Those claws are as long as Gwyndolin’s small body.

And between its teeth, something is shining. A mass of string or thread, tangled in impossible knots. Little beads of light pulse through it in time with a slow heartbeat.

Gwyndolin and Trina look at each other. Neither of them can speak through their chattering teeth, but they know this is what they seek. And it seems Gwynhael’s mind is going to let them take it.

Trina reaches for it. It is not a threatening gesture, not possessive. More curious than anything. Yet it pits Gwyndolin’s stomach with dread.

“Trina, do not…” he starts to say.

He is too late. With serpent speed, the dragon’s jaws snap closed on Trina’s arm, all the way up to her shoulder. There is a horrible spurt of scarlet. Trina has no time to scream. Her eyes go wide, her face white, and then the dragon sweeps her off the platform with one swing of its head.

Trina’s name tears from Gwyndolin’s throat. His high childhood voice disappears into the wind. Bent double against the resurgent storm, he crawls to the edge of the ruin and throws ring after ring of light down into the sky, wards to slow Trina’s fall. He does not know where she is. All he can see is silver sparks against the clouds as each ring shatters in turn. He prays that means he has caught her. If not, Trina is tumbling to her death like a wingless butterfly, and Gwyndolin is surely soon to follow.

Sick and horrified, he turns back to the dragon to find that its head is level with his. The glare of its amber eye roots him to the spot. There is no spell, no illusion that will save Gwyndolin now. Even his serpents are too cold to hold him up anymore.

The dragon rumbles. Its jaws start to open.

Gwyndolin’s mind goes blank. In its place, instinct seizes him. He flings himself forward with all his remaining strength and throws his arms around the dragon’s snout.

“Hael, please!”

No teeth pierce his flesh. No force sends him flying into the void. Instead, he hears a hoarse, deep voice in his mind:

Lin.

I am here, Gwyndolin thinks. Let me in. Let me find thee, let me free thee.

For a long time he kneels there, shuddering, with scales against his cheeks. The dragon does not move. Gwyndolin can feel its heartbeat vibrating through his bones. Eventually Gwyndolin’s heartbeat slows to match it. Its breaths warm his chilled body.

Its jaws open. Gwyndolin slides his hand inside. He grasps the threads of light and pulls them free.

The ball of memory is warm in his hands. Such an innocuous thing, Gwyndolin thinks. As he watches, it starts to ravel, like snakes uncoiling. Knots come loose, strands straighten. Some of them form lattices and wrap around Gwyndolin’s fingers. All the while the ball glows brighter and brighter until Gwyndolin is holding a tiny sun. He has to look away.

The light consumes everything. The world dissolves: the broken tower, the dragons, the ball of memory itself. It is free now. 

Gwyndolin is falling, floating…

…landing gently on the battlefield. 

He is fully grown once more, and he is unharmed.

Trina has not been so fortunate. She is on the ground nearby, trying to push herself up with one arm and slipping in the mud and blood. Her gown is a wilted, trodden flower. 

Gwyndolin drops to his knees at her side and scoops her up. Only then does it strike him that her other arm is gone, nothing left but scraps of fabric and so much red. All her spells and sweetness cannot help her. She is so slight. A wisp of a person, just like Yorshka when she was wounded. And just as then, Gwyndolin can do nothing but say Trina’s name, Miquella’s name, implore them both to stay with him. He wishes he could give them the breath he is wasting on words.

“Trina. Miquella. Do not leave,” he chants, like a litany, brushing windblown hair from Trina’s face.

The dream-saint manages a smile. “This was...our first adventure together...was it not?” Her voice is mist. “We must have another.”

Gwyndolin makes a broken sound, half laugh and half sob. “I think not. This was quite enough!”

“Go back now,” Trina whispers. Her fingers leave cooling red streaks on Gwyndolin’s cheek. “I must...send you on ahead of me. This dream...will not hold for long...now our task is done.”

“What of thee?”

“I know what I do. I...will not be far behind.”

Trina draws forth her torch, once again as if from the air, and tries to lift it. Her arm shakes beneath its weight and thumps to the damp ground. Gwyndolin covers her bloody hand with his and helps her lift the torch to eye level.

“Breathe with me,” Trina says. “I have not the strength...alone.”

Gwyndolin wraps his serpents around Trina and lifts her a little straighter so she can better reach the torch. Her skin is clammy. Through his serpents’ flicking tongues, Gwyndolin smells all the essences pouring off her: pain, fear, life. Everything is there in her sweat. 

“Thou wilt live,” Gwyndolin says, as much to himself as to her. He is not going to sit here and watch his dear friend lose their soul, he is not. He must pit all his will against that ending.

Trina grins through red teeth. “Of course I will. I have far too much to do.” Her voice, Miquella’s words.

Together, they take a breath and blow out the torch.

~~~

They should have come back by now, Eira thinks.


Then Gwyndolin wakes. 

The Darkmoon god bolts upright, taking a long, shivering breath as if surfacing through cold water. The blankets fall from his shoulders and the enchanted lily from his hands. The Omen children scatter from their sentry positions and huddle around him to give him warmth. Gwyndolin does not look at them or his brother, who is still asleep. He does not look at Yorshka, who is trying to sit up and hold his hand all at once. It is Miquella’s name quivering on his lips, Miquella to whom he crawls on hands and knees. 

Eira lifts her head from her husband’s chest, fully expecting his eyes to fly open too. They do not. Eira can see the veins through his pale eyelids. His skin, which has been cooling steadily for the past few hours, has turned ashen.
 
Eira’s stomach flutters. “What happened, Lin?”

Through chattering teeth, Gwyndolin mutters something about dragons. His gaze keeps sliding off Eira’s face. He is not really seeing her, she realizes, not through the veil of sleep and dread.

“My brother took her arm,” Gwyndolin breathes. “Forgive him, I beg of thee…”

Eira struggles to put the pieces together. Gwynhael became a dragon and bit off Trina’s arm? 

“It wasn’t his fault,” she says. It is a reflex, no more. She scarcely hears her own voice. 

Nearby, the Omen children are bristling. They are still clustered around Gwyndolin. Their eyes are locked on Miquella but they do not approach him. Eira has seen them do this before. They want to help, but they sense death descending and will not come too close. That frightens Eira more than anything.

Beneath her hands, the spaces between Miquella’s heartbeats have grown far too wide. His lips have turned dusky blue. Eira is losing him.

“Miq. Miquella.” Eira shakes him, then again, harder. “Miquella, wake up.”

Her own heart is beating too fast. If only she could cut that pulse in two and give it to Miquella, or better still reach into his mind and kill whatever is hurting him. That’s what she knows how to do. Instead she is frozen, as she was so many times just before she died. 

She meets Gwyndolin’s eyes across Miquella’s body. They are dark with fear. He does not know what to do any more than Eira does.

“Miquella!” Eira shakes her husband so hard his head lolls on his neck. Still nothing. He has never felt further away.

Morgott’s huge shadow falls across her. He is crouched beside her, solid as always. “Speak to him, Tarnished. Call him back.”

Eira shakes her head, breathing hard through her mouth. “He can’t hear me!”

“Thou’rt his consort, nay? Thou’rt as one with him. There is no place in this world or the next where he cannot hear thee.”

As he speaks, Morgott takes Eira by the shoulders and forces her to look up at him, into the rugged face she knows so well. There is no fear there, only the calm of absolute faith.

Eira’s heart slows a little. She lowers herself back down beside Miquella and rests her brow against his, trying not to recoil from his chilled skin. She plunges into her mind, sifting through the panic for the thread that binds her to Miquella. Silk-thin, silk-strong, a twist of gold in the depths of her being. When she finds it, she gives it a tug.

Come back to me, love. Follow me home. You’ll never lose the way as long as I’m alive.

She places a soft kiss on Miquella’s mouth.

For an agonizing moment, nothing happens. Yorshka stifles a whimper.

Please, Eira thinks.

Miquella’s chest swells with a long gasp. Panting, shuddering breaths ripple through his body; then his eyes flutter open and fix on Eira’s. They are hazy, but they see her. They know her. 

His blued lips quirk upwards. “Well,” he says faintly. “That was a near thing.”

The wash of relief is so strong it almost knocks Eira down. She gathers Miquella up, tucks his head under her chin, and rocks him, rocks herself. They are both shaking all over. 

Eira’s words tumble over each other when she tries to speak. “Lin said something ate your arm! Where did you go, where did you go, you're so cold, I thought I lost you!”

“‘Twas my turn to fall out of the sky. Peace. I will be well.” He is already trying to sit up straighter, craning his head around to see Gwyndolin. “Lin is here?”

Gwyndolin, who is clutching Yorshka’s hand, sags against his sister. Eira sees the breath go out of him. “I am. I feared thee gone beyond recall.”

“Not quite.” 

Miquella looks at Eira with a warmth that makes her want to weep. In the privacy of their shared thoughts, he adds, Did you kiss me awake? You are my fairy story, consort mine.

Eira’s cheeks go red. She buries her face in Miquella’s golden hair before anyone can see her blush. So much has changed since their battle at the Gate of Divinity, and all for the better, impossible though it seems. Eira wishes she really were a fairytale hero. In truth she is the Tarnished who bought Miquella’s hand with Radahn’s blood. She is the scruffy-haired peasant girl who only learned to read a few years ago. And yet when Miquella speaks to her like this, she becomes the most extraordinary person in the world.

Morgott shuffles to his feet. “I shall brew some tea.”

Eira grins into Miquella’s hair. For all that Morgott has softened in the past few years, he still cannot abide displays of affection.

They all rest for a while, Miquella in Eira’s arms, Gwyndolin in Yorshka’s (she has slipped off her sling so she can hold him properly). The Omen children nestle close, sharing the warmth of their strong little bodies. Gwynhael sleeps on. Now that his dream is over, his breathing is returning to normal. It seems the lily’s spell is wearing off on its own. Miquella, meanwhile, is not recovering as fast as Eira would like. She can tell from the way he rests all his weight against her that he is exhausted. His body is not taut with restless energy as usual. He may not have lost an arm, but he is wounded in some unseen way.

He is still shivering and his lips have only just regained their pinkness when he releases himself from Eira’s arms. She helps him to Gwynhael’s side, and he slips the lily out of Gwynhael’s hands. 

“Wake now,” Miquella says. Two quiet words that contain a command.

And Gwynhael’s body obeys. He comes back to himself gently, but like his companions, he is awake within seconds, trying to push himself up, eyes darting around the room. Eira sees at once that the god has changed. He is sturdier somehow, his movements more certain. His skin is still weather-worn, but no longer withered. There are lines at the corners of his mouth, the sort made by frequent smiles.

All this must be even clearer to Gwyndolin. He is holding his breath.

“How do you feel?” Miquella asks.

Gwynhael has eyes only for his brother. “When thou wert a child, Lin,” he says, indicating the lily in Miquella’s hands, “thou wert fond of flowers such as this. Thou didst wear them in thine hair.”

“Yes,” says Gwyndolin. His lips scarcely move.

“Thou wouldst leave them in our chambers, with lights to guide our feet when we returned home in the dark hours. Thou mad’st me a coronet of such lights once, and Gwynevere also. Thy sorcery adorned us both.”

“Yes. ’Twas my pleasure.”

Eira sees now: these aren’t memories of profound significance, like the ones she helped Gwynhael unlock with her lightning. These are just bits of daily life, smaller, harder to grasp. Surely Gwynhael would not be able to remember them unless…

The war god is grinning now. Eira has never seen that expression on his face before. It warms all his features and makes him look ages younger. Gwyndolin sees it too. His breathing has quickened, though he is not allowing himself to smile yet.

“And when I took thee to see Father’s captive wyverns in the training yard,” Gwynhael goes on, “thou wert yet so small that their slightest movements unbalanced thee and pitched thee to the ground. Ere thou couldst weep, I took thee in mine arms thus…”

Gwynhael bends and sweeps his brother off the ground. The motion is effortless, if a bit unsteady. Between peals of laughter, Gwyndolin flings his arms around Gwynhael’s neck, crying out, “'Tis thou, ‘tis thou!”

“’Tis I. At last!”

Then they are both laughing, spinning circles, Gwyndolin’s feet just skimming the ground. The Omen children bounce up and down around them and try to climb up their bodies. Soon they’ve pulled everyone down into a breathless pile. Gwyndolin tugs Miquella into his arms and holds him hard. Gwynhael extricates himself from the pile, makes Eira and Yorshka an extravagant bow, and swings them both into a dance that needs no music. All at once he is the boisterous, roguish prince of Gwyndolin’s stories. Eira’s heart soars to see it. Before she knows it, she has kicked off her boots and is spinning barefoot on the warm stones.

Amidst all this laughter, Gwynhael suddenly sobers again. His smile disappears as he makes his way back to his brother. “I returned to Anor Londo in secret, knowest thou? I laid my miracle on Father’s tomb. I did not seek thee out. I was not certain thou wouldst wish to -”

“Hush.” Gwyndolin lays his slender hand on Gwynhael’s arm. “’Tis done now.”

“I left thee alone.”

“Nay, ’twas I who left thee. Would that I fought for thee. Would that I ran with thee when Father sent thee away. How many nights did I dream of it?”

“Fight for me against our sire, little dragon? Father thought poorly enough of thee - didst thou believe he would not banish thee, wert thou to resist him? Nay, I did not wish thee ruined, or taken by illness in the wilds. Thou wert so young and frail yet. ’Twas better thou remained’st at home.”

“’Twas not,” Gwyndolin says softly. When his brother’s brow furrows in distress, Gwyndolin shakes his head and adds, “Never mind. We are together, are we not? We shall reclaim what time we lost.”

Eira listens to this conversation with some disquiet. This must be what Miquella meant when he warned that Gwynhael’s painful memories would return alongside his pleasant ones. She looks for her husband, wanting to ask what he thinks of all this, and finds that he has withdrawn to a root a little way from the center of the room. He is still very pale, and his eyes are gleaming strangely. When Eira looks at him, a bolt of his pain lances through her own chest. 

She knows what he is thinking about - who he is thinking about.

She sits down beside him and brushes her fingers against his wrist. Miquella does not always want to be held at times like this. Better to let him tell Eira what he needs.

“There’s still one you can save,” she says. “Your time will come. You’ll have this moment too.”

Miquella answers with a squeeze of her hand.

Chapter Text

It is a beautiful night. Gwyndolin has rarely known a better one. The sky is clear, the air is calm, and the setting sun is turning Leyndell bronze. It reminds Gwyndolin of the bonfires he had with his friends, out in the fields of Altus, before he returned home to put out the flame. And now Gwynhael and Yorshka are here too.

They spend their evening in the colosseum, where Gwynhael proves himself even more rambunctious than Gwyndolin remembers. Gwyn's firstborn is as much of a showman as ever, sparring first with Morgott and then Morgott and Eira together just because he can. He does not win: just when it appears he might, Morgott crouches down, unfurls a golden fan from his back, and lets fly a rain of quills. The assault distracts Gwynhael long enough for Eira to slip behind him and prod his back with the tip of her bolt. Gwynhael takes his loss in good humor, laughing and applauding along with his small audience.

Miquella keeps the combatants armed with protective blessings so they do not hurt each other, but he does not participate in the skirmishes. Gwyndolin wonders if he should really be using his magic at all. He is still chilled and pale, sitting on one of the tiered benches with a throw around his shoulders. Eira offered to sit with him earlier in the evening, but he would not hear of it. “I would rather see you dance,” he said.

Eira was hesitant to perform. By then some of Leyndell’s off-duty soldiers had trickled into the colosseum to watch, and their presence perturbed her.

“They’re too well-trained to tell me what they really see when they look at me,” she said, glancing around at the guards with some discomfort. “I wonder what they’re thinking. ‘She looks like dishwater next to Lord Miquella.’”

Miquella fixed her with his keen eyes, quite serious. “Of course you don’t.”

“You’re just being kind.”

“Not so. When you dance, when you fight, no one can look anywhere else.” 

He gave Eira a gentle push to her feet, and she pretended to stumble down the steps. When she looked back at him, she was grinning, aglow with his love for her. Miquella smiled until she was too far away to turn around again, and then his face clouded over.

Watching him now, Gwyndolin can guess what he is thinking. Miquella is following Gwynhael’s every move, nodding and murmuring under his breath, but it isn’t Gwynhael he is seeing.

“Art thou well?” Gwyndolin asks, knowing full well that Miquella will smile and brush him off like he often does.

Except he doesn’t this time, not quite. “I wish… Well.” Then he tosses one of his braids over his shoulder, his signal that this branch of the conversation is over.


Gwyndolin puts an arm around him anyway. Miquella leans into him with unusual willingness.

The Omen children put on their own show, standing on top of each other and tottering around the arena floor. This time they manage to hold the formation for longer, long enough for Gwyndolin to see the vaguest outline of the shape they are trying to make. If he applies a healthy dose of imagination, it looks like a beast rearing up on its hind legs.

Eira seems to recognize something too. “Are they… No, they can’t be. They’ve never seen that before,” she muses, glancing at Miquella.

Neither the god nor his consort clarifies what “that” might be.

In the end it is Gwynhael who steals the evening, as he did in every tournament of his youth. Eira puts a gravel stone seal in his hand, a catalyst made from an ancient dragon scale, and commences teaching him to wield red lightning. It does not take him long to catch on: in these lands, lightning is the province of dragons, and Gwynhael has always held dragons close to his heart. 

At first he only manages one or two crackling red spears. They sizzle down and strike Gransax’s bolt, which Eira has planted in the center of the arena, and scatter into sparks. These short-lived attempts do not dampen Gwynhael’s spirits. He keeps up a running assessment of his progress all the while, pacing tight circles and declaring, “I have it, I have it! Nearly!” to no one in particular. Eira encourages him with bits of advice that make no sense to Gwyndolin: “Think of what a dragon sounds like when it roars, and hold that in your hand!”

It must make sense to Gwynhael, however, because his next cast succeeds. The wind roars, the sky cracks, and a wave of a dozen or more red lightning spears scorches across the arena, leaving black pits in the sand. The deafening crackle echoes around the colosseum, growing stronger every time it rebounds off the curved walls until it seems the arena is full of bellowing dragons. The clamor drowns out the watching soldiers’ applause, but not quite Gwynhael’s booming laughter. Eira dances through the storm with her arms flung wide and her head thrown back with the joy of feeling sparks land on her face.

Amidst all this, Gwyndolin hardly notices Yorshka climb up a few tiers to where Morgott is sitting and stand on a bench so she can reach his ear. If not for all the noise, Gwyndolin would have heard her say, “Shall I tell him?” And he would have seen the Omen King’s grave nod.

It’s only after the celebration has worn itself out and the companions have returned to the Erdtree Sanctuary that Gwynhael’s mood shifts. It’s as if a lever has been pulled in his mind. His geniality evaporates, and he is somber again. He takes Gwyndolin up the the three flights of curving stairs to Morgott’s chambers, where Gwynhael is bedding down. There he asks without warning, “Who took thy serpents from thee?”

Gwyndolin wills himself not to be frightened by this volatility. Gwynhael was always changeable, and Miquella did warn that his returning memories might destabilize him. But there is an intensity, an anger, in Gwynhael’s face that makes Gwyndolin withdraw a pace, even though he knows it is directed inward and not at him. The coppery dimness does not help matters.

“Why ask me that again, on such a happy night?” he says. “I am long since healed. The tale is of no con -”

“Tell me.”

Gwynhael’s hands close on Gwyndolin’s arms. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to startle.

He realizes what he has done almost at once. Gwynhael looks down at his hands with obvious chagrin, then lets them fall to his sides and tucks them behind his back. “Forgive me, Lin. I mean thee no harm. I am…not yet quite myself.”

Gwyndolin sits down on the wide stone rail of Morgott’s balcony and tries to breathe away the knots of worry in his stomach. Miquella said it might be weeks or months before Gwynhael is himself again. That is a long time for Gwynhael to endure these sudden shifts of temper.

“Why wouldst thou hear such a horrid tale?” Gwyndolin asks.

“I would know the fate to which I abandoned thee.”

“’Twas no fault of -”

“I saw thy moon above the peak. Had I not lost myself, I might have come to thee.”

Gwyndolin knows that sort of blame all too well. How many times, in the wake of the battle with Friede, did he succumb to the same thoughts Gwynhael has just expressed? Had I not fallen to Friede’s magic, Yorshka would not have been hurt. He cannot allow Gwynhael to linger in such guilt.

“Very well,” he says, “but ere I tell thee, know that I bear thee no ill will. I bless the suffering I endured, for it led me here, to my dear companions of the Lands Between, and to thee.”

Gwynhael leans against the wall by the balcony and folds his arms. He is unconvinced.

“I shall be brief,” Gwyndolin begins. “A sorcerer of the painted world came to my city of Irithyll. There he plotted to overthrow me. He poisoned me and took Yorshka hostage. I could not risk her life, so I gave myself over to him.”

“Who was this man?”

“His name was Sulyvahn; may it be forgotten. He is not known to thee. I slew him by mine own hand.”

Gwynhael lifts an eyebrow. “Thou’rt stronger.”

“He had his victory ere I had mine. While I was weakened, Sulyvahn shut me in Father’s cathedral with a monster called Aldrich. A Lord of Cinder, he was. Knowest thou his name?”

Gwynhael’s exhale is almost a growl. “Rumors of a man-eater reached us on the peak.”

“Then I trust thou wilt conceive of my serpents’ fate.”

“Didst thou escape him?”

“Only just, and not alone. Eira bore witness to my captivity in her dreams and came to mine aid. She was a stranger to me then, yet she offered her life in my defense. Together we slew the devourer. She conducted me here, where I remained until I was healed.”

“A stranger.” Gwynhael’s voice drops so low it is scarcely audible over the night breeze beyond the balcony. In the Erdlight, Gwyndolin can see that his hands are curled into fists. “A stranger delivered thee, and I did not.”

“All is well,” Gwyndolin says, praying this does not make things worse. “’Twas Eira and Miquella and Morgott who urged me to extinguish the flame. I could not have done so without their aid. The world would yet be burning to ash, and my heart with it.”

Gwynhael propels himself off the wall with a sudden burst of rage and begins to pace the sparsely furnished room. “’Twas no stranger’s duty to defend thee. ’Twas mine! Were I not so consumed by mine own…”

He falters, unable to express what consumed him. His mind? His dragons? His stubborn belief that he could never come home, that war was all he had left?

He thumps his fist against the wall. “’Twas my duty to pull thee from the devourer’s jaws. ’Twas my duty to carry thee to the peak and see thee healed.”

“Mine healing was beyond thee,” Gwyndolin says as gently as he can. He has never been to Archdragon Peak, but he suspects it is sorely lacking in the soft beds, hot springs, and Miquellan needles he needed to recover.

Gwynhael shakes his head, raking his mane of hair back from his face. “I had furs and fires to warm thee.”

He sounds so young, as if they are children and Gwyndolin’s torment was the sort of thing Gwynhael’s strong, safe arms alone could remedy. He was always that way. The world was so simple and clear in his eyes.

Heart aching with affection, Gwyndolin says softly, “I do not doubt it.”


Before he can say anything more, Gwynhael whirls on his heel and kneels before Gwyndolin. He presses one fist to his chest in the universal gesture of fealty.

Gwyndolin’s lips part in shock. “Hael, please do not -”

“I know naught but battle. I can offer thee only my strength.”

“I do not ask thy -”

“I know it. Thou wert always unwilling to ask for aid.”

Gwyndolin almost laughs. “Thou’rt unwilling still!”

“I owe thee a great debt. Hast thou a journey to undertake on which I might assist thee?”

Gwyndolin does not want to tell him that unless Dunstan managed to pin down Gael in Ariandel, they will have to follow him to wherever the ash dreams came from, which may well be at world’s end. Gwyndolin does not want to involve his brother in that, however strong he may be.

Then again, Gwynhael’s strength might provide an advantage in that desolate place. More swords are always useful; Gwyndolin would be a fool to deny it.

His chest constricts at the look on Gwynhael’s face. It is the same expression he wore as he knelt at Gwyndolin’s bedside after injuring him in that argument with Gwyn. So fierce and desperate, helpless against anything his weapons cannot touch. In this moment Gwyndolin has the power to provide him with an enemy and a chance to protect someone he loves. A purpose. How can Gwyndolin refuse him that?

“Permit me to fight for thee as I failed to do before,” Gwynhael says. Gwyndolin has the distinct impression he is speaking of more than Aldrich now. “Let me be thy sword and shield.”

Gwyndolin takes his brother’s hand. “Mine Unkindled will welcome thine aid. As will I.”

~~~

Yorshka did not want to do this. She wanted to kiss her brother goodnight - both her brothers! - and go to bed, as Ursa advised. But she could not sleep. Her secret visit to Irithyll and her pact with Friede proved impossible to stomach, boiling within her while she tossed and turned beneath her covers. How did she ever think herself capable of disappearing to Ariandel as soon as she is healed, without a word to Gwyndolin? She has always been honest to a fault, and she has never kept anything from her brother, of all people. Deceit is corrosive to her.

And so she finds herself standing at the end of the infirmary corridor, waiting for Gwyndolin to come down from Gwynhael’s room. Ursa does not know she is here. She slipped out under cover of her invisibility magic, leaving her blankets in a person-shaped lump.

Yorshka does not know what she is going to say to Gwyndolin yet. Maybe she will keep her secret and say nothing at all. But she needs to do something tonight.

When she sees Gwyndolin step out of a hallway across the sanctuary foyer, she lets her invisibility fall from her shoulders like a dressing gown. 

“Lin?” she calls out in a low voice.

Gwyndolin hears her and crosses the hall to her at once, the hem of Miquella’s borrowed robe hissing over the floor. He takes her forearms in his hands, and she wraps her fingers around his arms in turn. 

“Thou shouldst rest,” he says. “Art thou unwell, dearest one? Did today’s events distress thee?”

Yorshka thinks of Gwyndolin and Miquella lying white and empty on the floor, their souls lost beyond their bodies. “A bit,” she admits, “but ’tisn’t that. I… May we speak?”

“Perhaps on the morrow.”

“Nay, I…would like to speak now, if thou’rt not too weary. ’Tis a matter of importance.”

Gwyndolin’s eyes dart back and forth across Yorshka’s face. His mouth tightens. He senses something of what is coming.

“Very well,” he says, without inflection.

Yorshka takes his hand and leads him down the hall to her room - his room, when first Eira brought him to Leyndell. It is dim inside save for the candle on the beside table and the Erdtree’s soft reddish glow. Yorshka can easily make out the vines trailing over the walls. In the past few days, she has taken to following their paths with her eyes to help her fall asleep.

She smooths out the patchwork quilt and sits down on the edge of the bed, while Gwyndolin tucks himself into the window seat. Yorshka fixes her brother in her mind as he is now, in case he is so hurt by what she says that he cannot bear to see her for a while. He looks so right sitting there with the Erdlight glinting red-gold in his hair. And Yorshka must spoil it.

She picks at her quilt for a while, her heart speeding until she is certain she will cry or be sick. Whatever she says, Gwyndolin will try to stop her, and that will tear her apart. Yorshka has never wanted anything so much as her brother’s approval. But this is more important. This is her future, her purpose. Her chance to be more than the lost girl from Ariamis.

Before she can stop herself, she lets it all spill out at once: “I called on Lady Friede whilst thou lay a-dreaming. I shall return to Ariandel, and she shall protect me. I do not hope for thy blessing. Thou’rt the world to me, thou knowest, and I love thee above all things, but thou shalt not sway me. I must go.”

For a long, terrible moment, Gwyndolin says nothing. Silhouetted by the Erdlight, Yorshka cannot make out his expression. That is just as well, because if she saw what must be on his face, her heart would break. It is bad enough that she can hear his unsteady breathing.

Yorshka waits in the dimness, sipping shallow mouthfuls of air.

When at last Gwyndolin speaks, his voice is cold: the tone he never uses with Yorshka except to warn her that she is not to argue. “If thou’rt to do this thing, Dunstan shall accompany thee.”

Yorshka squares her shoulders and lifts her head, bracing herself. “Lady Friede shall accompany me.”

“Thou wouldst entrust thy protection to the woman who well-nigh took thy life? Thou wouldst call her lady?”

“Didst thou look not upon her face when she wounded me? She is not Sulyvahn.”

I am not mistaken this time. I am not a silly little girl anymore.

Gwyndolin’s tone softens a bit, but not enough to ease Yorshka’s mind. “Thou’rt gentle of heart, I know. Thou’rt called to heal. But this is foolishness. I fear this preoccupation with Friede will imperil thee ere long.” 

A note of desperation creeps into his voice.

“I do not understand. What is thy business with this woman? How canst thou know she will not harm thee?”

Yorshka’s heart sinks. She has no answer for this that Gwyndolin will accept. 

She spreads her free hand helplessly in her lap. “I know it.”

“Thou knowest naught at all!”

Yorshka inhales sharply. Her hand curls into her skirts as if to anchor her. The words are true, to an extent: she did not know Sulyvahn was so wicked when she asked him for help with Gwyndolin’s nightmares. Gwyndolin is afraid Yorshka is making the same mistake again, that’s all. He doesn’t mean to hurt her. Yet no matter how hard she blinks, she cannot prevent tears from welling up in her eyes.

Gwyndolin must have heard her gasp, because one of his hands flutters to his mouth, and then all at once he is sitting beside her and pressing her to his chest and rocking her back and forth. His voice comes muffled and anguished: “Forgive me, dearest one, forgive me. I should not say such things. I spoke in fear, ’tis all. Think no more of it, I beg of thee.”

“I shall not,” Yorshka says, even though she knows she shall. 

After that, she lets Gwyndolin rock her, feeling his chest heave against her cheek. She aches to comfort him, so badly that she reaches for the chime at her waist, but of course that will not help. This is not a wound she can heal. She caused it herself. And it has been coming ever since she ran off to Friede’s church on her own. Knowing this only sharpens the gnawing in her heart.

“I am afeared for thee,” Gwyndolin says into her hair.

“I know it.” Her throat is too tight to say more than that.

Gwyndolin takes a quivering breath and mutters something like, “Father, I see thee now.” Then he kisses the top of Yorshka’s head and pulls back. “These past days, I feel I know thee not at all. I would see thee as thou art, not as I wish thee to be. Help me to know thee, please. Speak to me. I shall listen.”

Yorshka considers how to put this, how best to summarize all the intuitions and visions swirling in her mind. She needs to do it well; she may not have another opportunity. So much of it is still a mystery to her, and will be until she goes back to Ariandel. But faced with Gwyndolin’s pleading eyes, she feels compelled to say something. She cannot leave him so lost.

She will begin with what she knows.

Yorshka swallows her tears and puts her free hand between both of Gwyndolin’s. “Lady Friede is much as thou art, or as thou wert when first I came to thee. She feareth flame as thou fearest Dark. ’Twas for this reason she did not allow Ariandel to burn.”

“I perceive our…similarities. I will not deny it.”

“She was alone also.”

Gwyndolin looks at Yorshka with something painful in his face, sorrow and pity and pride all tangled up together. “So this is the source of thy concern for her. In her thou seest me. Thou wishest to be her spring, as thou wert mine.”

“If she will permit me.”

“Oh, my sweet girl.” Gwyndolin rests one hand alongside Yorshka’s face. “There are those who wish no spring, knowest thou? They choose to linger in winter, and scorn the thaw.”

“I know it. Yet I must try.”

“And shouldst thou fail, what then? Prithee do not break thine heart for Friede’s sake. I could not bear it.”

That has already happened, Yorshka thinks. Friede broke Yorshka’s heart when she took her scythe from the corner of her chapel and raised it against Gwyndolin and Dunstan. Yorshka has scarred over since then, and she will not break so easily should Friede betray her again. Her hope is not innocent anymore.

“Should I fail,” she says, “I do not doubt the greatwolf will be at my side.”

Gwyndolin has no argument for that; he saw the greatwolf fling Friede across the chapel the moment she injured Yorshka. That should be proof enough of the creature’s loyalty even for him. Yorshka wishes he had seen how the greatwolf defended and supported her on her solitary flight through the woods.

“The wolf is troubling to me,” Gwyndolin says, shifting uneasily. “’Twas not Madoc’s scent upon thee that won its allegiance, sayeth Dunstan. What sayest thou?”

“I believe it will conduct me to Mother’s tower.”

“’Tis a guardian, perhaps?”

“Aye.”

“And by thy scent it knew thee for Priscilla’s child.”

Yes - by her scent, by her essence, by something intangible that only that creature of snow and spirit can sense. This thought has been in the back of Yorshka’s mind since the wolf first set its amber eye upon her, that impression that it could see her. Hearing it in Gwyndolin’s voice solidifies that impression into something real.

Gwyndolin nods slowly. Yorshka can see the pieces are falling into place in his mind, even if he does not like the image they reveal. “What seek’st thou at thy mother’s tower?”

This is the question for which Yorshka still has no answer. “I know not.”

Gwyndolin sighs. “Yorshka…”

Before he can argue, she goes on, “I know only that I am called there. I know it in my heart, more than I have ever known anything.”

“We came nigh unto the tower on our journey, did we not? Why didst thou not go there?”

“I was afeared, for I feel some great change awaiting me there. Yet if I do not go, I will not… I will not become.”

“Become what?” Gwyndolin asks, soft and anxious.

When Yorshka does not answer, he pulls her into his arms again. His dread is in the stiffness of his limbs, in the way he cradles Yorshka’s head a little too hard.

“In mine youth,” he says, “my father bade me stay, always stay. For him I stood aside while my brother went into exile and my sister departed with her lover. By his will I remained in Anor Londo and kept the light, though I yearned to forsake my sun and find Hael and Vere again. On the day I claimed thee as my sister, I swore I would not shackle thee thus. Yet how can I allow thee to go to Ariandel in the company of a Londor witch, when thou thyself knowest not thy full purpose?”

Yorshka is glad she cannot see Gwyndolin’s face. If he is weeping, she will weep too, and then she will not be able to say what she must. It’s already difficult enough to deal him such a blow.

“I wish thee safe,” Gwyndolin says. His voice is so tight. A lump forms in Yorshka’s throat.

She puts her one good arm around him and holds him as hard as she can. Maybe she can leave a memory of her touch with him to reassure him until she comes home. 

“If I am safe,” she says, “I fear I can be nothing else.”

~~~

Gwyndolin harbors no delusions about his chances of falling asleep after that confrontation with Yorshka. He is still reeling with what he heard. Yorshka organized a return to Ariandel behind his back, with Friede as her chosen defender, no less. She told him nothing he can say will stop her.

And Gwyndolin told her she knows nothing.

He cannot blame her for keeping secrets. His reaction to the truth, at least at first, must have been everything she worried it would be.

All this repeats itself in his thoughts, over and over. Beneath it is the terrible possibility that if Yorshka finds her purpose, she may not want to come home.

Swept along by this current, Gwyndolin drifts through the corridors of the Erdtree Sanctuary. He considers going to the bathing pool to clear his mind. Instead his feet take him back to the foyer. It is cool here now, still perfumed with incense from evening prayers. A night breeze sweeps in through the open arches at the far end of the hall and rustles leaves across the floor. How many nights did Gwyndolin wander into this room during his convalescence, rehearsing with illusions what he would soon do in the kiln? Eira found him asleep on the stones on more than one morning. At that hour, there was never anyone else to find him. That suited Gwyndolin just fine.

But there is someone else here tonight. A figure, doubled over beneath the triple arches at the end of the chamber. The breeze carries a wheezing sound to Gwyndolin’s ears.

Gwyndolin pulls his shawl tighter and approaches on bare feet. The Erdtree’s coppery light is strong here, and it does not take him long to discern the figure’s distinctive three braids. As he listens to every breath rasping through his dear friend’s chest, Gwyndolin fears the worst. He wonders if this is the result of the hideous wound Trina sustained in Gwynhael’s dream. 

“Thou’rt ill,” Gwyndolin murmurs.

Noticing his visitor, Miquella tries to smile and grimaces instead. By the Erdtree’s copper glow, his beautiful face is drawn. “Oh, Lin, go back to bed,” he pants through painful, dragging breaths.

“Nonense. Tell me what aileth thee.” And then, realizing: “Have I upset thee?”

“Nay, I am glad for you and your brother, so very glad. ’Tis only…I did not imagine it would hurt me so. Silly of me, really. I ought to have known.”

The hurt of which he speaks is not Trina’s injury; that much is plain. “Tell me,” Gwyndolin repeats.

Miquella looks at him with raw eyes. “I dreamt of my Haligtree tonight…as it was before the rot. Before the Terrible Thing,” he says, still wheezing with every inhale. “I was there. I felt the…the wood and stones beneath my feet. I heard candles crackling and birds singing in the boughs. It smelled of sap…sharp and clean…” Miquella shakes his head and tugs at his braids, fingers snarling in his hair. “’Twas beautiful, Lin, ’twas so beautiful…”

Disturbed, Gwyndolin takes Miquella’s hands and works them free, then holds them to his chest so they can do no further harm. He wonders if Miquella cannot breathe because he is struggling not to burst into tears. Only once before has Gwyndolin seen his friend crumble like this. Calm and careful, bent but unbroken by storms, Miquella’s spirit is like a mighty tree in itself. To see it splinter is frightening.

“Shall I wake Eira?” Gwyndolin asks. Eira will know what to do.

Miquella does not relax at the sound of his consort’s name. Rigid and shuddering beneath Gwyndolin’s hands, he says, “She will come soon enough. I daresay she can feel this.”

“Then permit me to aid thee in the meanwhile.”

Gwyndolin slips off his shawl and wraps it around Miquella’s shoulders. He dares not pull the golden god close, but he keeps tight hold of Miquella’s hands. Hurt radiates through that link. Gwyndolin can feel it throbbing in his own veins: hurt for Malenia, Radahn, and all the things Miquella never accomplished.

They stand like that for a while, silver and gold, bathed in the Erdtree’s fiery light. Miquella’s harsh breaths scrape against the silence. Then inch by inch, his head droops onto Gwyndolin’s shoulder. His ruined braids tickle Gwyndolin’s neck. His breathing eases, though it remains uneven.

“Thy new tree will grow, and the great needle inside it. ’Twill be more beautiful than the old,” Gwyndolin says, but no more. After that he just shushes Miquella like he would Yorshka. He has no right to say anything else, not with Gwynhael asleep and well in Morgott’s chambers. Whatever words he offers will ring hollow.

“Must I always be condemned to wait?” Miquella mutters, voice thick. 

“Perhaps not. We may find something of use to thee when we resume our journey. Yorshka may find something in Ariandel.”

“Yorshka?” Miquella’s head snaps up. He is all too eager for this change of subject. “She is returning to the painted world?”

It stings to hear that aloud. Now it is Gwyndolin who loses his breath. “Aye - with Friede as her protector. Yorshka wisheth to see her late mother’s tower.”

Miquella winces. “I confess I am responsible. I wrote to Friede on your sister’s behalf, you see. I did not imagine ‘twould lead to this. Yorshka was most concerned for Friede’s welfare, and I only wished to ease her mind so she might heal.”

“’Twas thou who -”

Gwyndolin bites his tongue against a spike of anger. It’s no use getting angry at Miquella. He may have been privy to Yorshka’s deception, but in the end that deception was hers. Her plan, her secrets. An absurd part of Gwyndolin is proud of her for managing it. He did not think she had it in her to forge her own path, by deceit or otherwise. 

He exhales hard, determined not to argue while Miquella is so fragile. “Hast thou aught else to confess?” he asks. He tries to sound more playful than aggrieved.

“I listened to your heart while you slept a few days past.”

“While I… Oh, no matter. What heard’st thou?” 

“Dunstan is correct: your breathing is slower than it ought to be, even in sleep. I do not believe I must intervene just yet, but I must advise you to return to me often so I may ensure you do not worsen. You’ve had no ill effects from our adventure, by the by? No chills, no weakness?”

Miquella is talking a bit too fast, grasping for something he can control. He and Gwyndolin are the same in that regard: they would much rather face external puzzles than the turmoil in their own hearts.

“I am perfectly well, I assure thee,” Gwyndolin says. A voice inside him warns that he cannot make his weak heart go away by ignoring it. He ignores that too. “I fear thou art not, if thou wouldst name the loss of thine arm an adventure.”

Miquella shrugs. “I am prepared to lose more than my arm if I must, and indeed I have done so.”

Miquella does not elaborate on that, and Gwyndolin does not ask.

The golden god draws back, still pale but less shaky. “So, will you allow Friede to accompany Yorshka to Ariandel?”

“I…recoil at the thought, yet my sister is quite assured of Friede’s repentance.”

“And you will allow Yorshka to undertake this quest?”

“No answer did I give her, yea or nay. In truth, what allowance needeth she? The painted world is her home.” Such simple words, yet they turn Gwyndolin’s stomach.

“She would rather go with your blessing, I am sure.”

“Of course.”

“I well recall the first time I let my sister go.” Miquella turns away from Gwyndolin, looking up through the arches at the Erdtree’s towering trunk. “She went off to study with a sword master who taught her to fight without her eyes. I could not write to her: the master was a hermit of no fixed abode. Never had we been so long apart.”

Here Miquella’s voice quavers. He folds his arms around himself.

“How didst thou endure?” Gwyndolin asks. At this moment, this is what he needs to know above all else. He will soon have to endure the same separation.

“I waited. I told myself ’twas all for Malenia’s good. I kept busy - I would have run mad otherwise. And when she came back and showed me what she had learned, what she had become, ’twas all worthwhile.”

Miquella blinks rapidly and swallows, the column of his throat working.

“I rejoiced to see her fly.”

Chapter Text

Amalie lights the way.

When Sirris tipped over the edge of the Pit of Hollows, her junior, unbeknownst to her, tossed an orb of blackflame after her. Now it rides the same air rushing past Sirris’s body. As she falls she watches the fireball split: first two flames, then four, sixteen…myriad. The little silver lights scatter like fish through the depths. Outwards they swim, towards the hundreds of niches lining the pit’s sheer walls, drawn to the wicks and wax still hardened there. By the time the ward at the bottom of the pit slows Sirris’s fall and sets her on her feet, every candle is lit. She looks up and sees not walls of earth hemming her in, but a galaxy of tiny flames.

The only candles that are not lit are those on the altar at the far end of the pit. The mound of vertebrae is naught but a misshapen shadow. Amalie’s flames have spurned it, denying it attention and reverence. A quiet stand against Hodrick and everything he did in this place. A touch of solidarity.

But the altar is still there. The lack of light cannot conceal it from Sirris’s dark-sighted eyes. She can see every facet of those vertebrae, their rounded bodies and the pointed processes that once joined them to muscles. Even if she could not see them, she knows those bones. Their shapes are inscribed on her mind, on her heart, on who she is. 

She can also see the humanity. A cloud of teardrop sprites swirls around the altar, smoke-dense and black. Some of them dip down and touch the vertebrae, as if they recognize their own bones. They exude unrest that Sirris did not sense from the humanity in Lothric Castle, a miasma of pain, fear, and anger that makes Sirris’s skin crawl with gooseflesh. She shakes her whole body to try to rid herself of the buzzing in her bones. It does little good. These revenants are not at peace, and they cannot help but share their anguish.

Can you see him? Amalie asks in Sirris’s mind.

It has always disquieted Sirris to share her consciousness through her humanity. Not now. Now she feels that her mind is standing back to back with Amalie’s, lightly touching. A good, protected feeling.

Not yet, she says. I am certain I will soon. 

Sirris isn’t ready for him. She will never be ready, and maybe she doesn’t need to be. Maybe it’s enough that she is here.

Call him. Invite him to a little duel.

That is your answer to all your troubles, isn’t it: draw steel and staff and have at them.

I’m only saying you shouldn’t be afraid. Hodrick’s ghost is part of your mind. You made him, you can unmake him.

If only it were that simple. Sirris’s greatest foes have always been those born of her own mind: her shame, her fear, her guilt. Her unrequited love.

Amalie seems to hear this thought even though Sirris does not articulate it. He can’t do anything to you that you haven’t done to yourself, she says. This isn’t really your granddad. It’s just you.

Sirris feels something like a tug in the back of her mind. Were Amalie physically present, she would have squeezed Sirris’s hand.

Good luck, ma’am.

With that, Amalie retreats in Sirris’s consciousness. She is still there, but instead of standing back to back with Sirris, she has withdrawn to a respectful distance. Watching, waiting, letting Sirris face this demon on her own - but not alone. It occurs to Sirris that there is a difference.

Maybe when all this is over she and Amalie can lie very close to each other like they did in Lothric Castle. She felt safe then. She would like to feel that way again.

Sirris opens herself to the Pit of Hollows: the shallow water beneath her feet; the damp, earthy air. She lets it sit at the back of her throat until it is no longer suffocating. Just air and water, not death. 

This will not be like that disastrous battle with Bernice. This time Sirris is forewarned.

She lets her mind fall open too.

The sprites around the altar seize upon the image at the forefront of Sirris’s imagination, shaping the man whose violence left them here. Hodrick’s pointed helm, tattered armor, round shield and rippling blade all coalesce from the smoke. The silhouette is perfect, down to the last straggling wisps of hair.

Dear little Sirris, says the ghost. Its voice is perfect too.

Sirris clutches at the silken talisman in her left hand, wishing Gwyndolin were here. She reminds herself that Amalie is here, a steadying pressure at the back of her consciousness. She reminds herself that this Hodrick is nothing more than a projection of her fears.

Stand with me, Amalie.

Right behind you, ma’am.

“I came to say goodnight, Granddad,” Sirris tells the ghost. She is proud that her voice is cool and steady, the voice of a Darkmoon Knight. “I came to say that I am not like you. I returned when my captain called me home and stood beside him when he brought down Dark upon the world. I ran away, but I never set steel against Master Gwyndolin’s throat. I never betrayed him. The madness in you is not mine.”

The ghost gives a nasty little chuckle, an affectation Hodrick only developed after his fall. You’ll be mad someday. You will return here and pile up your victims when you feel yourself slipping.

“I will not.”

You already have. The poor souls you left for dead in Irithyll, the birds who flocked with you - they were your first.

The words are cold water in Sirris’s face. She digs her fingers into her talisman and tries to remember that the ghost is only echoing her own thoughts back to her in Hodrick’s voice.

Amalie feels Sirris wavering. Don’t listen. Tell yourself what really happened, like you told me.

“I was afraid, sir, not mad,” Sirris says. 

I taught you better than to flee what you fear.

It’s true, he did. Sirris would have done better to uphold her chivalric vows and die with her comrades. But then she would not have been there to help Gwyndolin rebuild after Dark, in those difficult early days when he needed all the allies he could get. 

“It was shameful, cowardly behavior. I will not deny it,” she says. Amalie tugs at her consciousness again to encourage her. “Yet my captain is glad I live. He entrusted his beloved sister’s safety to me, and soon I will bring her home.”

You are weak when set beside the Blades of old. Your captain entrusted Gwynevere to you only because the rest of his birds are mere chicks. What choice had he?

Sirris is weak. Too weak to kill Aldrich, too weak to die for her captain or free Yorshka from the tower. And yet…

Sirris runs her thumb over the faint embroidery in her talisman. She thinks of Gwyndolin’s hands in hers, and of Amalie holding her while she made her terrible confession. Drag it into the light and set it on fire, her junior said.

“I was not too weak to stand with Master Gwyndolin when he committed what I believed was highest heresy. I was not too weak to trust him. Despite my failings, I remained loyal always.”

Sirris is trembling, but she is gaining strength too. Her voice holds a bit of Gwyndolin and a bit of Amalie now, and more than a little of herself. 

“What did you ever do, Granddad? Were you strong? You piled up all these bones, and my estoc pierced you all the same.”

Quick as dark wings, the ghost thrusts its flamberge at Sirris. Just as fast, Sirris flicks her left hand up and turns the weapon aside. The sprites comprising the blade skitter apart across her knuckles.

“Have you forgotten you taught me to parry? I learned from the best.”

The ghost chuckles again. And now I will teach you to be mad.

Hodrick’s silhouette crouches and then lunges at Sirris, flamberge turned down for an upward cut. Sirris sparred with Hodrick so many times in her youth that she does not have to think about how to respond. She dances backwards through the water, knowing the ghost cannot harm her unless she allows it, and knocks the flamberge aside as it nears the highest point of the cut. This time she parries so hard that the sprites making up the blade disperse into smoke and do not reform.

Letting her momentum carry her forward, Sirris shoves the ghost to the ground and kneels on its legs. Her knees sink through the mass of sprites, through cool darkness into cool water. The humanity laps at her legs like waves on rocks. 

The ghost’s face is featureless black, but Sirris can still imagine her grandfather’s sharp eyes and cheekbones. In her mind they are bright, not cruel and furtive as they were just before the end. There is laughter in them still. Wit, cleverness, pride. The traits of the man who taught Sirris to love the estoc and arranged for her to fence for Gwyndolin. The grandfather who said her hair looked like molasses.

The ghost is losing substance now that Sirris has it pinned. It tries to sit up and grapple with her, but its fingers pass right through Sirris’s palms. The humanity sprites scatter and reform, scatter and reform.

“I have my own shame. I will not bear yours as well,” Sirris tells the ghost, speaking as much to herself as to Hodrick who is not really here. “Your betrayal and your madness are no reflection on me.”

The ghost squirms beneath her grip, the school of sprites expanding and contracting. Sirris is taking away from this haunting vision with every word she speaks. In the back of her mind, Amalie’s presence blazes up like a fire fed fresh kindling.

“I choose to remember you as the man who raised me with dignity, the man who taught me to love and serve my captain, who believed there was nothing I could not attain if I set my mind to it. You were not always the Mound-maker you became in the end.”

Sirris is panting and the words are raw in her dry throat, but there is power in them yet. Something in her mind, in her heart, is shifting. 

“When I raise my sword, I do so as the granddaughter of a holy knight.”

Beneath Sirris’s knees the ghost shifts too. It flicks through the forms of a burning stake witch, Sulyvahn’s crocodilian beast, pools of Aldrich’s slime, before finally settling on Gwyndolin. Sirris’s stomach flutters. Even in silhouette, her lord is breathtaking. This is Gwyndolin of old, veiled and sun-crowned. 

Instinct urges her to recoil. She cannot kneel on her captain’s legs!

Before she can withdraw, Amalie is there again, tugging at Sirris’s mind and reminding her that this is not real. Finish it, that tugging says.

Sirris steadies herself. The ghost is very still beneath her now: her own mind daring her to go on.

“And as for you, my dear lord…”

She rests her hand alongside the ghost’s face. Her fingers pass through cold black smoke. 

“If I have kept you on a pedestal, if I have been in love with an illusion…” 

Amalie’s presence flickers within Sirris, like a vigorous nod.

“…then I will endeavor to be so no longer. Henceforth I will see you as you are.”

She takes the sun-crown between her hands, clamping down on it just long enough to lift it away.

The ghost bursts. The sprites fly apart like a thousand black moths lifting out of a tree and disperse to all sides of the pit. 

In their wake Sirris kneels in the shallow water, breathing hard. Her chest aches. Her cheeks are wet. But she is still here, straight-backed and controlled. She has not fallen apart as she did when Bernice attacked her. Precision, elegance, and restraint: all are hers. Today she is worthy of her Darkmoon veil.

Sirris glances at the altar, to which the humanity sprites are trickling back in slow black streams. They make a halfhearted attempt to coalesce into Hodrick’s form again, but it is hazy and insubstantial. It dissolves with a wave of Sirris’s hand. 

So her demons are not gone, as Amalie warned they would not be. Nonetheless, Sirris seems to have broken some of their power over her. That is enough for now.

She gets to her feet and finds that she is quite steady. As she makes her way across the pit, armored feet splashing softly, she feels one step removed from her emotions, the sort of cool rationality she achieves when she fences. She passes the grisly altar with nary a whisper from the gathered humanity.

I cannot give you rest, she tells the sprites, but I pray you find peace. Your tormentor is dead.

Sirris’s composure holds until she steps out of the water onto a dry patch of dirt near the altar. Only there does she sink to the ground, drop her face into her hands, and surrender herself to shudders.

It’s done. The first step is taken.

On cue, Amalie begins pattering at her consciousness. Are you all right, ma’am? Did you do it? I felt something break, and I’m not sure if it was you or whatever is down there with you. I don’t mean to say I doubt you, ma’am, I’ve never doubted you, but I can’t exactly see what you’re doing and I can’t tell if I’m feeling your feelings or mine -

Amalie.

Sirris’s shoulders are shaking. She can’t tell whether she is laughing or crying or both.

“Amalie.” She repeats her junior’s name, aloud this time, just to hear the music of it go out into the darkness.

Yes, ma’am?

Restraint.

You sound more like yourself now. Then you…did what you came for?

My ghosts are not banished. They may never be, but I believe I have put them in their place.

Amalie’s triumph sweeps through Sirris like a warm drink. Oh, ma’am!

I will be with you as soon as I trust my legs to hold me. Refrain from throwing yourself down the pit after me.

…How did you know?

Then they are both laughing, exchanging gladness between their shared mind. Just for this moment, the pile of bones beside Sirris cannot hurt her.

~~~

By design, there is no way out of the Pit of Hollows save by homeward bone. Hodrick kept a store of them near the altar, tucked into a niche between two stalagmites. Sirris never liked reaching into that gap. She harbored some childish superstition that the two rocky teeth would snap closed and sever her hand at the wrist. Today, no such worry delays her. She is still shaky, but her mind is clear. She puts her hand into the gap without fear, takes a bone, and whisks herself out of the pit.

From there it does not take her long to walk back from the bonfire on the walls above the Undead Settlement. Though she keeps her hand on the hilt of her estoc, she does not really expect anything to attack her, ghost or otherwise. And nothing does. Hodrick flickers at the corners of her vision just once, there and gone again as soon as Sirris looks at him. She is certain the ghost did not disappear on its own, but because she willed it to go.

Amalie and Gwynevere are waiting for her in the courtyard where the rotted greatwood once stood. Amalie makes no pretense of decorum, just throws her arms around Sirris and holds her hard. Their armor rattles together, buckles catching. Amalie tucks her head next to Sirris’s cheek.

No one else has touched Sirris this way, and she finds she likes it. She wants this strong, vibrant young woman near her, close enough to share breath. She has only ever thought about Gwyndolin that way, but those were daydreams of which Sirris was always ashamed. Amalie is better. Amalie is real: not a god or an ideal, but a person who has helped Sirris in ways she is only beginning to understand.

The thought frightens Sirris a little: she has always been reluctant to open herself to others. It also gives her a wondrous sense of possibility.

And so, when Amalie tilts her lips up to Sirris’s, Sirris meets her there.

She does not think of Gwynevere or Gwyndolin or propriety. 

It is a brief kiss, just a touch, but it contains so much. I’m here. We can be more than this, if you want. We can be we.

When Sirris and Amalie draw back from each other, they exhale at the same time, stirring strands of each other’s unveiled hair. There is nervous laughter in those exhales, hopeful laughter. Amalie’s green eyes are sparkling. Sirris’s cheeks are warm.

Then Sirris remembers that a goddess is watching all this, and the spell breaks.

“Apologies, my lady,” she says, snapping to attention. “That was…unbecoming of a knight. My junior is still learning to conduct herself as a Blade of the Darkmoon, but I have no such excuse. I should know better.”

Amalie rolls her eyes.

Sirris’s cheeks burn even hotter when Gwynevere smiles. “Be not ashamed. Affection is a rare bloom in this world. I am delighted to see it.”

They decide to take the long way home. According to Gwynevere, the bonfire that took Sirris and Amalie from the Undead Settlement to Lothric Castle only serves the local area. Irithyll is beyond its strength to reach. Despite this, the journey, which seemed so long on the way to Lothric Castle, passes in a blur. Sirris remembers little of it afterwards save that she touched Amalie’s hand now and then. Not because she was afraid or hurt. Just to touch it. 

Soon they are through the secret tunnel in the cliffs and out on the plain below the Undead Settlement. They cross the frozen lake where the ash-worm erupted and almost drowned Sirris. There is no worm this time, and the holes in the ice are already freezing over. On the other side of the lake, Amalie scours the cliffs and finds a side entrance into the Catacombs of Carthus. They have no other choice but to go inside in search of a bonfire that might take them the rest of the way to Irithyll. Sirris remains with Gwynevere while Amalie goes in alone. The mental bond she and Sirris made via their shared humanity has not yet faded, so Sirris can hear her commentary every step of the way. It seems the catacombs’ restless dead are largely inactive now that Wolnir is slain. Sirris cannot suppress her relief.

Eventually Amalie finds the remains of a bonfire, lights it with her blackflame, and guides Sirris and Gwynevere inside. Gwynevere trembles at the sight of so many bones but does not falter. Once again Sirris is astonished by her quiet fortitude.

The bonfire sweeps them all away on a breeze of embers. This time it works.

In Irithyll, they take Gwynevere to the Darkmoon barracks to rest. The goddess is quickly surrounded by young knights who cannot restrain their questions. What was Gwyn really like? How did it feel to live in Anor Londo when the sun still shone?

Sirris does not have the heart to tell them to mind their own business. Gwynevere is unbothered by all the attention; she indulges every question with grace and good humor. Sirris can already tell she is going to be popular in Irithyll. Gwynevere has her own questions, too. She is enthralled with Irithyll and its many flowers and glowing things. When the knights tell her it was Gwyndolin and Yorshka’s design, she glows with pride.

“I thought I saw my brother’s hand in this,” she says. “So careful was he in all his work, and ever such an artist.”

Conspicuously absent from this happy scene is Gwyndolin himself. When Sirris manages to break into the merriment and ask about this, her comrades tell her Gwyndolin is in Leyndell with Yorshka. Yorshka was hurt in a battle in Ariandel, they say. She required Miquella’s healing, but she is out of danger now. The woman who injured her is still alive and under Dunstan’s watch. It seems Yorshka did not wish her slain.

This is not what Sirris wanted to hear. She will have to speak with Dunstan.

She turns to Gwynevere, bunk creaking. “I’m afraid we must escort you on another journey, my lady.”

“’Tis no trouble. I do not know of Leyndell. Is it near?” Gwynevere asks.

Amalie glances at Sirris and grins. “You might say that.”

~~~


Eira wakes on the floor of the Erdtree Sanctuary in pink dawn light, with Miquella on one side and Gwyndolin on the other. She is sitting up and regretting every second of it. Sleeping upright on top of last night’s bouts with Morgott and Gwynhael did nothing to ease her still-healing ribs. Her side throbs, but she dares not move lest she wake Gwyndolin. His head is on Eira’s shoulder and he is breathing only just enough to lift his chest. That bothers Eira a little.

On her other side, Miquella is already quite awake and watching her. He must be able to tell that Eira is sore, because he says with a gentle smile, “I told you not to fight until you were healed.”

“You know I can’t help myself.”

“My fierce one.” Miquella reaches across her and touches her cheek, petal-light. “Well, at the very least, you should have slept in your own bed. Forgive me for waking you with my…distress.”

“Do you really think I could have gone back to bed after I felt how much pain you were in? When I woke, I knew right away you couldn’t breathe. Of course I wanted to stay with you. I’m only glad Lin was awake to keep you company until I came to you. Why was he wandering so late?”

“Yorshka told him of her intent to return to Ariandel with Friede as her guard.”

Eira’s brow furrows. “What does Yorshka want with Friede and the painted world?”

“She cannot yet say. Naturally, Lin was troubled. He came here to clear his mind.”

“Like you?”

Miquella looks out through the triple arches, up into the brightening sky. Eira wonders if he is thinking of Enir-Ilim and the plot that led to Malenia’s bloom. 

“I often came here to think in the days after.” He does not need to specify what “after” means. “Do you remember? I was avoiding you, and myself. Then one night you sat down beside me and said, ‘Seeing as we’re eternal consorts now, don’t you think we should talk?’”

Eira chuckles under her breath. “No one had ever spoken to you like that before, had they?”

“Never. You were, I think, perfectly suited to wake me from my misguided dreams.”

“How is Trina, speaking of dreams? She didn’t lose her real arm, did she?”

“No. She is weakened, but she is healing.”

“Tell her I love her.”

“She knows, and she returns your love.”

Trina loved Eira before her other self did. That was one of the first truths Miquella ever told Eira. He was sitting in the treehouses above Elphael with tears streaking down his beautiful, cold face, and even amidst that grief, Trina smiled through him. “Trina likes you,” he said.

“I couldn’t stop you from becoming a god, like she wanted,” Eira says now.

“No, but you refused to let me be a god without a heart.”

At the word “heart”, Miquella glances at Gwyndolin, watching the slight rise and fall of his chest.

“I am concerned for him. This journey he means to undertake with Dunstan, this pursuit of Gael…”

Just then a paper bird flutters through the triple arches and glides straight towards Gwyndolin. Unable to land in his hands, which are folded in his lap, it beats its parchment wings against Gwyndolin’s legs instead.

Miquella releases himself from Eira and goes to Gwyndolin in that unearthly silent way of his. He scoops up the bird. In his hand it goes still. He unfolds its body just enough to glimpse the handwriting within.

“Blade Sirris,” he says.

“Sirris?”

The Darkmoon Knights’ second-in-command does not often write, and when she does there is always a practical reason: an invitation to an ash-worm hunt, an offer of trade in weapons or spells.

Miquella is already unfolding the bird the rest of the way, eyes darting over the page. “She wishes to call on us in Leyndell.”

“Miq, don’t read Lin’s letter!”

“Oh, let him sleep a while longer. Our dream-battle with Gwynhael was taxing for him.”

“I hope it’s important, at least.”

“We are to have guests. Sirris asks if Dunstan might come along with her - it seems he is impatient to resume his journey with Lin now that Yorshka is healing.”

“And?” 

None of this sounds important enough for Sirris to send word ahead. Morgott will grumble about the unexpected visitors, but that isn’t unusual. There must be something more to it. Miquella is withholding the crux of the matter.

“And…” His face brightens, but it does not banish the touch of sadness lingering around his eyes. “I believe Lin will forgive me my intrusion once he hears this.”

“If you don’t stop being mysterious, I’ll -”

“Blade Sirris and her comrade have found Gwynevere.”

~~~

Friede is at the kitchen countertop with Siegward, as she often is these days, when Dunstan returns to the cellar. He has been gone for some time, talking with one of the Darkmoon Knights: a severe young woman Friede has not seen before. The rumor is that this knight has found Gwyndolin’s long-lost sister and will soon escort her to a place called Leyndell, where Gwyndolin and Yorshka are staying. Friede has decided to go with them if she can. Having promised to return to Ariandel with Yorshka, she needs to wrestle down her guilt and speak with the girl properly.

Dunstan is holding one of those paper birds with which Friede has grown very familiar. When Siegward notices it, he sets down the vegetables he is bundling together to hang up. “A reply already? How did they answer good Sirris?”

Dunstan shrugs. “Lin didn’t waste words. He just says, ‘Come at once.’”

“Might I be among those who come at once?” Friede asks. She is not afraid to be direct; Elisabeth and Siegward have made it clear that she is not a prisoner.

Dunstan looks Friede up and down. Of everyone she has met in Irithyll, this Unkindled is still the most suspicious of her, and not without reason. Friede is quite certain he will say no. 

She is wrong.

Dunstan gives a resigned shrug. “Yorshka made herself clear when she came here yesterday. Not much point trying to keep you away from her now.”

That will have to be good enough.

Dunstan does not permit Friede to see where they are going: apparently the path to Leyndell is privileged information with which she cannot yet be trusted. He ties a length of dark cloth over her eyes - without undue harshness, it is true - before leading her out of Gwyndolin’s house. Friede expects Dunstan to handle her as he did after their battle: roughly, unconcerned that she might lose her footing and stumble. To her surprise, this is not what happens. Dunstan’s touch is firm but never insensitive.

He steers Friede through an endless series of streets - probably a precaution meant to disorient her - up a lift and a large flight of steps, then down what must be a corridor and into a shallow pool of cold water. Were she not accustomed to the cold, Friede might have gasped with the shock of it.

What happens next, however, does steal her breath. Dunstan lifts one hand off her; then comes a gust of piney air and golden light that reaches through Friede’s thick blindfold. 

Then suddenly, she becomes aware that she is somewhere else altogether.

The water around her feet is cool now, not icy. The smell of earth and rain-damp vegetation fills her nostrils. When did she last smell such verdant growth, and where? Not in Londor; that is certain. She wonders if Dunstan has taken her through a painting into a world apart, like Ariandel.

She stiffens as Dunstan moves behind her and works at the knot in her blindfold. “Don’t open your eyes all at once,” he says. “It’s brighter here than where we came from.”

Friede can see that already. When the blindfold lifts away and the light behind her eyelids turns red, it becomes even more apparent. She blinks several times, opening her eyes a little wider with each blink, letting the light touch her bit by bit. It stings at first; then her pupils contract and the pain eases. 

Between blinks she begins to piece together a picture of the landscape around her. A turbulent gold-tinged sky. A pool of clear water bordered by evergreens. Distant rugged cliffs and amber grass. And towering above, so tall that she could never lean back far enough to see its top, is a mountainous glowing tree. It appears to be on fire. 

Friede tenses. A leaf drifts down and brushes her arm, and she twitches, expecting it to burn like an ember.

Dunstan notices, to Friede’s chagrin. “The Erdtree ain’t really on fire, it only looks that way. The fire inside it is down in the roots. Can’t touch you.”

Fire in a tree, and yet it does not burn? What sort of world is this? Friede recalls the Millwood Knights wandering Ariandel in search of a new forest to call home. Their sacred Ethereal Oak had rotted away and they wished for another of its kind to worship. Friede is half convinced that this “Erdtree” is what they sought.

Looking up at it, cradling the sky in its branches, Friede feels very small indeed. Part of her does not like that. The other part wants to lie down and sleep in its light like the child she does not remember being. Forget Londor, Ariandel, the First Flame, all of it. Put aside her scythes and rest, and use her hands for something gentle.

Dunstan gestures uphill towards a walled city with gilded domes just visible above the ramparts. “Let’s see if Morgott lets you into Leyndell.”

Friede does not know who Morgott is, but from his name alone - sturdy, unlovely - she judges him to be a formidable figure. She does not particularly want to meet him, nor does she want to walk through this new world where everything is too bright. It all looks like it’s smoldering, whatever Dunstan says to the contrary. A light world, a fire world. Not meant for her. Irithyll’s dim beauty suited her better.

Dunstan doesn’t give her much time to brace herself. He sets off up the hillside from the pool at a brisk pace, and only after a moment does he realize Friede isn’t following him.

He turns back around, arms folded. “I’m not going to let you wander about on your own. You come with me or you don’t come at all.”

Friede does not move. If she is to enter that citadel and face Morgott’s scrutiny, she will do it with her dignity intact, not blinking and dumbfounded as she is now. For that, she needs whatever information Dunstan is willing to give her.

“Might I know the name of this place, at the least, and what manner of folk I am to see?”

Dunstan shrugs, as if he sees no peril in the question. “The name won’t mean anything to you. This is the Altus Plateau in the Lands Between.”

What a silly name. “Between what, pray?”

“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. All that matters is who you’re going to see: Miquella of Crimson Gold, the god of these lands; his consort Eira, Third Elden Lord; and Morgott the Life-Given, Shield of the Realm. You’d best show respect.”

Friede flinches despite herself.

Dunstan’s face softens. If that last sentence was a taunt, a purposeful echo of Vilhelm’s words, he seems to regret it. He takes Friede by the arm again, gentler this time.

“Best be off.”

It’s a long walk through the city, but it makes little impression on Friede save for the dead dragon on the walls, which is very impressive indeed. The rest is too golden, too much like the dwellings of the gods in her own world. She decides she will be civil to the three great ones Dunstan named, but no more. Lady Elfriede of Londor has never bowed to anyone’s authority and will not do so now. No matter how uprooted she feels.

Friede tries to prepare herself as she and Dunstan climb, through broad avenues and up great boughs. By the time they reach the temple at the city’s peak, which Dunstan calls the Erdtree Sanctuary, she deems herself ready for anything. Nonetheless, the sight that greets her on the threshold gives her pause.

The lords of this land and her own are all arrayed before her. 

Dressed in casual garb and seated on roots though they are, they make an imposing picture. On one side of the room is Gwyndolin, pale and steely as before, and Yorshka beside him. Standing next to her like a sentinel is a wild-haired man who so closely resembles statues of Gwyn that he can only be the lost firstborn. On the other side of the room is a young woman with the slight, taut build of a dancer. On her right, a beast of a man with tangled horns and a furred tail towers over her. Dragon-born, Friede judges, though that doesn’t seem quite accurate.

On the young woman’s left is the most striking person in the room. Friede knows at once that he is Miquella the god. It is not his exquisite, youthful face that marks him as such, but his eyes. Amber-warm and amber-sharp, they could pierce down to the soul.

Those eyes turn on Friede now. So does every other eye in the room.

“Dunstan,” Gwyndolin says through a clenched jaw.

Dunstan shifts and grumbles something to himself. “I think she’s all right. Siegward took the edge off her a bit.”

That is the most charitable thing Dunstan has ever said about her.

Taking this as permission, Friede approaches the root Yorshka is sitting on. Gwyndolin’s whole body goes stiff. Yorshka touches his arm and, with what is obviously a great effort, he forces himself to relax. 

Yorshka pats the root. Friede sits beside her. 

This simple exchange sets Friede’s nerves jangling, though she tries not to show it. It frightens her to be so close to Yorshka.

No sooner has Friede taken her place than two more people sweep into the room through the open front doors. One is a diminutive Darkmoon Knight, the other a tall, beautiful woman who bleeds divinity like the sun itself. 

The knight glances around at the assembly. 

“…Oh.” 

She looks up at her divine companion. 

“I think Sirris was right, my lady: we should’ve followed her ‘round the side door. Would’ve been more…subtle. I just wanted to get you to your brother sooner! Now we’ve walked right into the middle of things and given everyone a shock. Oh, Sirris is going to tell me off when she gets in here… Are you all right, Master Gwyndolin? You're not going to faint, are you? Please don’t faint.”

Gwyndolin does not acknowledge this babble. He rises to his feet like a man entranced, looking at the woman who must be his sister Gwynevere.

They meet each other in the center of the room. Gwyndolin lifts one hand, palm out. “Vere?”

Tears glisten in Gwynevere’s eyes. “Sweet Lin. How tall thou standest.”

“Thou’rt…real?”

They touch palms. Lock fingers. Then they melt into each other’s arms, laughing, crying, talking over one another.

“I should not have left thee…”

“I bade thee go…”

“…long wert thou alone?”

“…wished thine happiness always.”

“…too selfless, Lin…”

“I thought to run with thee, but I…”

“What sorrow hast thou…”

“…hoped my sun might lead thee home…”

“…and I came never back. Oh, forgive me…”

Words fail them both. Gwyndolin presses his face into Gwynevere’s shoulder, and she cradles him close. Gwyn’s firstborn goes to them and wraps his siblings in his big arms. Friede cannot see his face, but he is trembling. They all are.

This is far too emotional for Friede’s taste, and yet some part of her aches for it. She has never been embraced like that. The Sable Sisters were not sentimental with each other, not even Yuria, whom Friede knew best. She never let herself wonder if she was missing anything. She had no use for softness - or at least she convinced herself so. Now she wants to know what it feels like to be held so close.

Yorshka looks up at her with those deep blue eyes that see into Friede’s heart. There is such pure understanding in those eyes.


Without a word, she laces her unbound arm through Friede’s.

Friede’s breath leaves her. She has to close her eyes.

Yes, she thinks, for this child I will brave Ariandel’s flame.

Chapter Text

What follows is a council, and during that council, Gwynevere watches. She is good at watching. She perfected the art through many audiences in Anor Londo, seated on her father’s left while his advisers made proposals or the common folk brought petitions. It was there she learned how much people can reveal without saying a word. This has served her well as a healer: the afflicted do not always say outright what is wrong with them. Looks and gestures explain more than a thousand speeches. They are portals to the heart; windows on pride, shame, joy, and need.

And there are many open windows in this room. 

There is, for instance, the way Amalie’s eyes lock on to her senior as soon as Sirris comes in through a side door. Sirris keeps her gaze modestly on the floor as she takes her position behind Gwynevere, but she sneaks glances at her junior through lowered eyelashes.

There is the young Elden Lord and her beautiful god, touching each other’s wrists every so often. I am here. I will always be here, their touches say. They are in love and falling deeper every day despite, Gwynevere thinks, past struggles.

There is the huge, bestial man who stands behind them, with his hands folded on his knobby staff. Gwynevere sees that he is not as frail as his stick would suggest. A warrior’s experience is written in his poise and every flick of his eyes around the room. Sometimes he tilts his head to let the light flare on his horns, like he wants his companions to notice them.

There is the dragonborn Yorshka, sitting beside Gwyndolin with all the piety of a saint. Yet her posture says she is not as innocent as she appears. Her straight back and clear eyes bespeak resolve. Her heart is set and she will have what she wants no matter what.

There is the Unkindled woman Friede, meeting every eye but Yorshka’s with high head and icy stare. When the dragon girl’s clear blue gaze alights on her, Friede has to look away and reset her mask.

And then, of course, there are Gwynevere’s brothers, whom she thought she would never see again. 

Gwynhael, to her delight, is much as she remembers him: still irrepressible and loud, fingers always moving, shifting, looking for something to grasp. The shadow of past suffering lies on his face, but he is not broken. If Gwyn thought to humble him or make him meek by sending him into exile, he failed. Gwynevere is proud to see it.

She watches Gwyndolin most of all, for he is not who she remembers. Her little brother always avoided eye contact, made himself as small and unobtrusive as possible. He was afraid of taking up room he did not believe he deserved. Now he is upright and unveiled, asking and answering questions with the assurance of one who knows he has as much right to be here as anyone else. He is not the least bit shy. He is comfortable with the people in this room as he only ever was with his siblings. That in itself is extraordinary. Gwyndolin never liked people. They frightened him.

Now Gwynevere sees the lines of kinship running between Gwyndolin and everyone in this chamber save Friede. His bonds with Yorshka and the Unkindled named Dunstan appear especially strong. Gwyndolin glances at Yorshka with automatic regularity, and she in turn pats his arm to reassure him. Dunstan, meanwhile, stands quiet and protective behind Gwyndolin. They are aware of each other at every moment, finishing each other’s sentences with an ease born of long familiarity. It is plain they have endured something together. Now they are planning to endure again, to go to world’s end and find whatever threatens the natural cycle of Fire and Dark.

Gwynevere rejoices to see these changes in her brother. She also knows that such changes often come of hardship. Whatever obstacles Gwyndolin conquered on his path to the kiln and afterwards, they were not easily overcome. And before that, what did his life become once Gwynevere departed Anor Londo? She dares not imagine what it cost Gwyndolin to keep the city of the gods lit for so many years. His fragile shoulders were not meant to bear the sun.

She should have fought harder for him. She should have made Gwyn understand that his youngest child was not a daughter even though he wielded moon magic and liked to wear skirts. She should have convinced Gwyndolin to stop wearing that ring. She should have taken him with her when she left Anor Londo.

Then again, maybe these people around him now are the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybe it is long past time Gwynevere joined the new family her brother has made.

She could be of use at world’s end. She is not much for combat, but she has seen and treated plenty of combat wounds at the Lothric Castle settlement, and she knows incantations that provide support in battle. Her days of reclining on cushions distributing blessings to adoring worshipers are long gone. Those days were golden and easy, but Gwynevere does not miss them. She is most alive at times that would have made her former self faint: with the blood of a stitched-up wound on her hands, or the blood of a mother she has guided safely through childbirth.

“I don’t think Gael’s leading us anywhere pleasant,” Dunstan says. “It’ll be hard going, like as not. We’ll take whatever help you can give.”

Gwynevere watches everyone in the room offer their swords: Eira first and Miquella close behind, then Amalie and Sirris, and Morgott last, the most cautious of them all. Only Yorshka and Friede, who have their own journey to make, cannot promise aid. 

Gwynevere looks at her elder brother, who nods in silent understanding.

“Might I offer mine assistance also?” she asks. 

~~~

They determine that it would not be wise to bring everyone to world’s end at once. Traveling with so many people would be cumbersome. Instead, Gwyndolin and Dunstan will go ahead on their own and call for aid as circumstances demand it through the rings they all wear. They will try to summon only the people best suited to a given foe, so they need not endanger any more of their companions at a time than need be.

Dunstan reiterates that Gael would not tell him whether excessive firelinking created the ash place, only that Fire was somehow involved. They might be facing anything.

Yorshka announces that she will depart for Ariandel as soon as she is healed enough to travel. Gwyndolin swallows the lump in his throat and gives her his blessing.

The days that follow are full of quiet companionship. Everyone is storing up gentleness and love to carry them through the trials ahead, when such gifts will be scarce. Gwyndolin listens to his brother’s stories of adventure and courage until Gwynhael’s voice becomes as familiar as it was when they were children. He lets Gwynevere pin up his hair, as she did when she was trying to convince Gwyndolin to attend one of Anor Londo’s many revels. He reacquaints himself with her softness, the warmth that always made him feel, if only for a moment, that he was beautiful just as he was. Gwynevere is glad to hear that he no longer wears the reversal ring. She finds it very fitting that Gwyndolin buried it in the kiln.

Gwyndolin spends a good deal of time with Dunstan as well. Sometimes they talk and plan; sometimes they stand side by side on a balcony, comforted by the silent knowledge that whatever is coming, they will overcome it together. If they could defeat the combined might of all the souls who ever linked the flame, they can face world’s end.

Meanwhile, Yorshka’s wounded shoulder mends enough that she no longer needs to wear a sling. While she heals, she tries to reach Friede. Mostly they sit in each other’s presence, getting used to one another. Friede always asks some variant of the same question: “Whence cometh thy concern for me?” And Yorshka always answers the same way: “I too was a lost thing once.”

My brother gave me home and purpose, she does not say aloud. Now I will give it to thee.

The night before she leaves for Ariandel, Gwyndolin holds her until dawn, beneath the moon just visible amidst the Erdlight. In the morning he begs her to be safe and tells her he prays for her happiness. He tells her he loves her. He kisses her brow and gives her the decaying scrap of Ariandel with a hand that shakes only a little. Yorshka promises she will come back to him, though she does not know for certain that she will.

She takes the scrap of the painting to Friede, who asks her once more, “Wilt thou truly have me with thee?”

“I will have no one else.”

They both touch the scrap, and they are gone.

Just like that, something new begins.

~~~

The first thing Friede notices is the smell. The sweet rotten scent that permeated Ariandel is fading away, replaced by the tang of burning wood. Her body tenses, urging her to run before burning wood becomes burning flesh becomes burning soul.

Then the world coalesces around her and her desire to flee grows stronger still. The ground and the cave walls are alight with soft but steady flames, and the snow is melting and the clusters of fungal rot are blackening at the edges. A wretchedly thin corvian lies in this slow ruin, his sunken chest only just lifting with each breath. 

Turn back, Friede’s mind chants. Turn back, turn back, turn back. Her mouth is dry as kindling, her heart an erratic thumping in her chest. She almost does not see Yorshka kneel amidst the flames and cradle the dying corvian’s head in her hands.

“…naught to be done. May the flame soon grant thee rest.”

It is the heartbreak in Yorshka’s voice that brings Friede back to herself. The girl sounds close to tears, as if she can feel all the corvian’s protracted suffering. 

With a great effort, Friede pushes back the edges of her panic. “Art thou certain of this course? Already it distresseth thee. ’Twill only grow worse, I fear.”

She does not go to Yorshka’s side. Although the flames are still low, she cannot bring herself to walk through them. Her legs lock when she tries. 

Yorshka rises under her own power, eyes flashing. “I am a child no longer.”

There’s nothing for it after that: Friede has to walk. She manages it one step at a time at first, holding her skirts off the ground and choosing where to place her feet with agonizing care. She feels like she is balancing on a tightrope. Any misstep either way will send her to her destruction. I will pay my debt, she tells herself, and this alone pushes her on. Friede dislikes being indebted to anyone.

By the time she reaches the tunnel mouth, she is fairly confident that she isn’t going to burst into flames at any second. This is for the best: the greatwolf is waiting outside, huge and powerful, and Friede does not want her former foe to think her weak.

Yorshka goes to the beast and buries her face in its fur. Her shoulders shake just twice before she masters herself. She walks beside the wolf all the way through the dripping, melting snowfields with her head high. This is not the same girl who fled Father Ariandel’s chamber sobbing and helpless. She may grieve for her birthplace, but she is not going to break. 

She and Friede do not speak much on the way. Much of Friede’s attention is taken up by keeping her pulse in check and avoiding patches of burning grass. She wishes she had her scythes; she would welcome their reassuring weight on her back. She is relieved that the Farron followers and Millwood knights in the forest do not seem inclined to fight. None of them approach the greatwolf. Most just sit against the flickering rocks with their heads on their knees.

Ariandel is going to sleep.

Friede is too preoccupied with the fire for that thought to strike her as hard as it should. She fears what will happen to her when it does.

The greatwolf escorts them through the snowfield and across the swaying rope bridge. By some miracle it holds their weight, though sparks are beginning to eat through the ropes. Friede holds her skirts out of the cinders’ reach and tries not to let Yorshka see how uncomfortable she is. She flinches each time a spark bites at her hands.

I could not kindle this flame myself. Let me find the strength to guard this child through it.

They pause at the doors to her chapel, which are still open. Through them Friede sees that the inside is smoldering, flames licking up the pillars and across the flagstones. Nothing appears to be disintegrating, however. The paintings leaning against the columns are still whole, their oils unmelted. This place has been protected while the rest of Ariandel slowly burns. Friede thinks she knows why that might be. It does not comfort her.

But she needs to go in. If Dunstan spoke truly, Vilhelm’s body lies in the catacombs. He should have a better resting place than that fly-infested charnel pit. Friede owes him that much in return for his loyalty.

She looks down at Yorshka. “Might we pause here a while? I…have an errand.”

”Thou wishest to retrieve thy weapons?”

“‘Twould be best. I can wield magic without them if I must, but I will be stronger with a blade in mine hands.”

“And thou wishest to attend Sir Vilhelm.”

Friede forces her face to remain blank. “Yes. I do not doubt he was cruel to thee and thine, yet he did me good service.” 

“I hear thee. I would wish the same ‘twere it my knight who lay fallen.”

Yorshka peers inside the chapel. Friede has the distinct impression that she is looking through it, not at it.

“My lady,” she says, “who abideth in the attic?”

Friede’s chest flutters. Not what, Yorshka said, but who - as if she already has some idea, though she cannot possibly know. Yorshka has grown even more perceptive than she was when last Friede saw her. There is something preternatural about it now. The child’s gifts are being amplified now that she is back in the painted world. She is transforming. It’s as if Ariandel recognizes some secret potential in her and is helping her unseal it.

“The painter of the new world,” Friede says. 

It must be so. She sensed it even before that last terrible battle: little tuggings on the threads of creation, not far above her head. Surely that is why her chapel is not yet burning even though it has caught flame. It would do no good were the new painted world to burn before it could be completed.

“Wishest thou to see her?” she asks. Part of her hopes Yorshka will say no. The painter has always perturbed her. She sees too much with those eyes that are young and not young at all. 

Yorshka nods solemnly. “Might she have some guidance to offer me?”

“She might.” 

In fact, I am certain of it, though I do not believe thee in need of guidance, dragon of spring. To mine eye thou’rt quite certain of thy path. 

Rejoice that thou hast a path at all.

“Will she guide thee as well?”

“…Nay, child. Where would she lead me?”

Yorshka looks Friede full in the face. “To the new world.”

A chill finger traces up Friede’s spine. There was prophecy in those words, whether Yorshka knows it or not.

“The new world is not for me,” Friede says, but she is uncertain now. Whatever strange transformation Yorshka is undergoing, it gives her statements a weight of inevitability they never held before.

Then the prescient light in Yorshka’s eyes goes out, and she is once more her sweet self. She holds out her hand.

“We shall go inside together. Be not afraid, Lady Friede.”

Friede is afraid. For so long she believed there would be nothing left for her once Ariandel rotted or burned - no home, no purpose. Now the flame is loosed, yet it seems there may be something for her after all, whether in Irithyll or the new creation. That is far more terrifying. Perhaps life always is.

Friede wonders if Gwyndolin thought these same things when he put out the flame.

Am I now to find kinship with the last god of Anor Londo? What strange times these are.

She does not take Yorshka’s hand, but she does walk with her into the church. The greatwolf pads behind them.

It takes all Friede’s considerable discipline to cross the chapel. The flames around her feet trouble her enough, her memories yet more so. Just below her is the room where she fought and died twice, where Ariandel’s flame would not let her go, would not let her rest. The room where she struck a girl who could not fight back. Beside her are two living reminders of that disastrous fight: the greatwolf who nearly took her life and the dragon girl who saved it.

And below all this is the pit where lies Friede’s most loyal companion. Left to rot among the flies, like so many of Ariandel’s dead. Friede is not a sentimental woman and does not readily form attachments, but that thought turns her stomach.

I did this, she thinks. I brought the rot upon this place, and upon Vilhelm. I will be the worst sort of craven if I cannot now face him.

Thus distracted as she is, Friede does not register the ladder hanging from the wall near the front of the chapel. Her thoughts are directed downwards, not up. It’s Yorshka who points it out with a soft, “This was not here afore.”

Friede considers the ladder with unease. Indeed it was not there before, though she sensed the painter in the attic even before the battle. The girl must have slipped in here silent and invisible - but how did she get into the attic without letting down the ladder and attracting Friede’s notice? Under her own power, most likely. The painter has always been more resilient and adaptable than her childlike visage suggests. Friede does not doubt she could have scaled the chapel wall with her nimble dragonborn limbs.

But if she needed no ladder to climb to the attic, why let it down at all? For her dear Uncle Gael? Or for Yorshka? Friede has her suspicions as to which person the painter wants to see. It only deepens her unease. There is a plot unfolding here, and it has passed beyond her control despite her attempt to imprison the painter. Friede does not like to feel at a loss for control.

She does not want to climb the ladder either, but Yorshka makes the decision for her. Once the girl starts climbing with swift, decisive movements, Friede has little choice but to follow her and watch her back. 

Friede did not often visit the attic of her chapel. She had no need; nothing up there was of use to her. The room is as spare now as it ever was, a plain wooden garret with the rafters not far overhead. Its only distinguishing feature is the colorful stained-glass rose window in the far wall, perhaps the only bit of true color in all Ariandel. To its left now stands an easel bearing a canvas taller than the girl who sits before it. Friede knows the girl at once and is not at all surprised to find her here: this is the painter Vilhelm locked in the library, scaly-faced and slit-pupiled with eyes at once young and ancient.

The painter has primed her canvas white, but she has not yet laid in any objects. The brush in her right hand moves ceaselessly, pantomiming the landscapes she will soon paint. She does not look at her two visitors, though she must have heard the floorboards creaking. Her strange gaze remains fixed on the easel, her eyes flicking back and forth with the rapidity of a dreamer’s. What is she looking for? Friede wonders. Is she imagining her new world? Or can she already see it, clear as the fire crawling along (but not yet burning) the walls? If that is the case, all she has to do is fill in the lines.

This begs the question: why has she not yet done so?

“I thought perhaps thou hadst begun to paint,” Friede says without preamble.

Still the dragon girl does not turn around. “I have not the proper pigment.”

Her voice is as youthful as ever. Her words are not. Perhaps that is why the painter troubles Friede so. She recalls Vilhelm telling her that when he took the girl captive, she did not struggle, protest, or despair. In fact, she was unbothered by the whole affair, as if she knew her captor’s efforts would come to naught. It unsettled Vilhelm - no easy feat. 

“Are painted worlds not inked in blood?” Friede asks, pushing all hints of disquiet from her voice.

The painter hums thoughtfully to herself. “Ariandel was so, and all the painted worlds before it. My world shall not be. ’Twill be a cold, dark, and very gentle place, and ’twill make someone a goodly home.”

At these words, Yorshka looks up at Friede with pure hope. Seest thou? Did I not say she would lead thee to the new world?

Friede wants to scoff at such naïveté. She is also beginning to think that if a painted world could be made from the depthless well of Yorshka’s optimism, it would last forever. There would be no burning or rot, just flowers springing from thawed soil.

“What pigment dost thou intend?” Friede asks. She does not expect an answer. 

“Uncle Gael will bring it,” the painter says.

That only makes Friede warier. “Thou’rt as forthcoming as he, I see.”

What is going on here? Friede knows Gael was scuttling around the painted world some time ago, preparing the way for an ashen one who might kindle Ariandel’s flame. The bonfires were surely his work. Dunstan and Gwyndolin were the disastrous fruits of his labors. Now the slave knight is preparing a mysterious pigment with which to make a new world? If she accomplishes nothing else while she is here, Friede intends to uncover this plot. She can do nothing about it now, but at least she will no longer be ignorant of the scheme carried out under her nose.

Before she can begin her inquisition, Yorshka asks, “Whose goodly home will it be?”

The painter’s restless hand pauses, though she still does not turn. “’Twill be a home for all who have need of it. Welcome, kinswoman. I am glad to see thee here at last, beyond the veil of sleep.”

She met Yorshka in dreams? Is that why the painter was so untroubled by her capture: she knew deliverance was close at hand?

Yorshka approaches the canvas and peers at it. Friede wonders if she too can see the world that is to be, as yet unformed by any pigment. “Am I to have some part in this? Didst thou call to me in dreams so I might assist thee in the birth of a new land?”

The painter cocks her head and gives her brush a few experimental flicks. “What think’st thou?”

“I think I must go first to my mother’s tower. I have heard her calling me there - or perhaps the call is and was ever mine own. I sense some change awaiting me, though I know not what it may be.”

“I think thou’rt quite right. Thou shalt find new purpose there. Art thou prepared to accept it?”

Yorshka hesitates only a few seconds before nodding.

“Art thou afeared?”

“I…I am. But if I do not go, I shall never be more than I am now. I told my brother so ere I departed.”

“I think thee brave for that. Change is the most fearsome foe of all, is it not, Lady Elfriede?”

Friede resists the urge to reach for a scythe she doesn’t have and grip it for reassurance. Standing in this small, smoldering space is stripping her nerves raw, and all this talk of home and purpose and change is not helping. 

She draws herself straighter despite her discomfort. “I am here, am I not? Though the hour is late, I am here to guard this child whom thou sayest hath a part in the new creation. I am not yet quite lost.”

It is the first time Friede has said this aloud. It feels better than she expected, like landing a small, hard blow against an opponent heretofore untouchable. 

“Thou'rt here because thou’rt lost, I think,” the painter says. “Thou seek’st purpose alongside Priscilla’s heir.”

Yorshka’s eyes widen at the word “heir”, but she has no chance to inquire further. The painter is already speaking again, her brush gliding just above her canvas with renewed energy.

“The swiftest way to the tower is through the catacombs. The path down the branches is perilous and the flies are horrid beasts. Thy knight could tell thee so, could he speak.”

This last sentence slips right through Friede’s guard and lodges deeper than she imagined it could. Unthinking, she reaches for a wall to steady herself and jerks her hand back as soon as she remembers the slow-growing flames. Yorshka looks at her with a concern as intolerable in its own way as the painter’s piercing observations.

Friede wills herself to go numb. “My knight lieth below. I know this.”

“Oh, Sir Vilhelm is not there now.”

Friede’s nails bite into her palms. “Sayest thou the flies took him entire?”

“Nay, he came up from below some time ago. I know not whence he found the strength. He was in a poorly way indeed.”

“Thou think’st me a fool, child? The ashen one cut Sir Vilhelm’s throat with crow talons. Surely he is dead now the flame is loosed.”

“True death cometh yet slowly to this rotting land, despite the flame.”

“There is no one in the chapel nave.”

“I laid a spell upon him to conceal him while he is weak. This place is not safe for the wounded, as thou well knowest.”

The painter does not say aloud, ‘Tis thy doing. Friede hears it all the same.

“Why wouldst thou aid him thus?” she demands. 

“I fear he had a dreadful ordeal in the pit. He was in need, and I am not unfeeling. And I am curious.”

As she says this, the painter lifts her hand and mimes a series of delicate brushstrokes, as if she has thought of some new detail to add to her new work. Friede fights the urge to grip her by the shoulders and make her look away from her blank canvas. She has had enough of this child who is not a child at all and those eyes that see worlds.

“What is curiosity to do with it? He took thee captive - I should think that the end of it.”

“I was curious to know if thou wouldst return to him. He was most dutiful to thee.”

“Thou wouldst know if my withered heart holdeth yet the dregs of pity, nay? Is this some game of thine?”

“Uncle Gael is rather certain thou’rt heartless, but I wonder.”

“There is naught to wonder.” Friede’s voice comes sharp - easy, like it was before the battle that changed everything. Whatever her recent defeats, she will not be made an object of fascination in her own church.

“Thy knight was a headsman steady of hand and cold of blood, was he not? He might have slain me in my captivity. Yet never once did he harm me.” The painter gives the canvas a final flick. “I wonder if ‘twas thine order.”

That is enough. Without another word, Friede crosses the attic and slides down the ladder on one hand. She does not feel the friction of the metal against her palm. Yorshka is climbing down behind her, but she takes no heed. When her feet strike the floor, she sees nothing but the greatwolf snuffling at something near the stairs leading down to the catacombs. Friede is across the chapel before she is aware of it. Even the greatwolf’s low growling only gives her momentary pause. 

She kneels down beside the greatwolf, so close she can feel its breath on her skin. Yorshka kneels with her. She must sense the concealing spell woven through the air just as Friede does, because she gives a soft “Oh.” She lifts her hand, looking to Friede to ascertain her readiness. Friede gives her a tight nod.

Yorshka draws her hand ever so gently through the air. The spell dissolves with a soft breath.

Vilhelm is lying where he must have collapsed when he dragged himself up from the pit. Blood stains the floor all around him. His helmet is gone and his black hair clings to his cheeks, damp with sweat and blood. With each rattling breath, his closed eyelids flutter and his face twists. His throat is a red mess, the four cuts half-sealed as if he tried to work a healing incantation and only partially succeeded. Bloody rents in his clothes suggest further injuries. Embers rest along the length of the wounds like fireflies.

Friede does not look away. She will not inflict that final indignity on her knight. Vilhelm should have had a clean death, and this rotting world denied it to him. As it is now, Ariandel does not let anything die clean.

Thou gavest me thine oath, and it led thee to ruin.

Yorshka acts before Friede can. With quiet, solemn movements, she undoes the strings tying her porcelain chime to her waistband and rings it. The sweetest sound Friede has ever heard resonates through the chapel. With it comes a golden glow and a sense that the air itself has warmed and softened. The greatwolf’s growling diminishes and then stops. Vilhelm’s feverish shivering eases, though his breathing remains choked.

Yorshka bows her head over her chime and rings it twice more, this time with greater concentration. With each ring Vilhelm’s ravaged body relaxes a bit further into unconsciousness. Though it might be a trick of the firelight, the cuts on his throat seem to narrow a little. Not enough, however. Yorshka’s magic will have difficulty reversing a mortal wound here in this stagnant place where life, death, and health have all become twisted parodies. Ariandel will deny true healing until its last cinders burn out.

The flies did not have him, at the least.

Having done all she can, Yorshka closes her eyes in prayer. 

“I know not if he will live,” she says. “If not, may it be that I gave him gentle passage into death.”

Friede’s next word is a breath. “Why?”

“I cannot abide suffering.”

“Didst thou not hear the little painter? Sir Vilhelm is mine executioner. There is precious little goodness in him. Surely thy brother and thine Unkindled could tell thee so.”

Yorshka’s eyes hold a conviction no longer as ingenuous as it once was. “A healer must do no harm and cast no judgments. To that I hold.”

Friede shakes her head. “I do not understand thy ways, child.”

“Wouldst thou remain with thy knight while I seek the tower? The greatwolf will accompany me.” 

Does Friede wish to remain behind? She is not certain. She has borne witness to many deaths, but this is different; Vilhelm was the sole member of her congregation to follow her into exile when she failed to usurp the flame. Not a friend - nothing so saccharine as that - but a steady ally. Friede does not know how to bid farewell to someone like that. Mourning is foreign to the people of Londor. Yuria would have said that Vilhelm’s defeat in battle marked him as weak and undeserving of sorrow. At one time, Friede would have said the same. Then the First Flame swallowed her and she acquired rather more sympathy for the world’s defeated.

Yet Vilhelm always hated pity, and he would consider it beneath Friede’s station to attend a knight who failed to uphold his oath. He was her iron fist, cold as winter. If he ever wavered, he did not let her see it. Were he conscious now, he would be ashamed to appear before his lady covered in blood and filth and shaking with fever. Humiliation atop humiliation.

“He would not wish me to see him thus,” Friede says, unsteadier than she would have liked. She cannot help but feel that leaving Vilhelm to meet his fate in solitude is the coward’s path. There are some things from which the eyes should not be averted.

As always, Yorshka is too gentle to her. “Then leave him to his rest here, in this church where he served his lady.”

That is what Vilhelm would want, and it is the last bit of dignity Friede can return to him. Nonetheless, the heaviness in her stomach compels her to make some gesture, something to mark this loss and lower the curtain on it. In all likelihood this will be the last time she sees Vilhelm alive. The chapel bonfire will not save him; the hollows of Londor cannot see those beacons, much less heal beside them. Yorshka’s magic, strong though it plainly was, may not be sufficient either. No, when Ariandel loses its hold on him, he will die and he will burn with everything else.

Friede hovers her hand over Vilhelm’s brow a moment, then pulls away. She does not touch him. Tenderness was never their way. 

Forgive me for the fate I brought upon thee, she thinks.

Then she bows her head close to Vilhelm’s pain-twisted face and speaks the sincerest words she can think of:

“Do not go gentle into thy last night.”

She closes her fist around the empty air and draws the spell of concealment back down around her fallen knight. Aching dully in her heart, she gets to her feet. “Shall we be on our way, Lady Yorshka?”

Yorshka touches the place where Vilhelm’s hands must be, just once, and rises. “Let us go.”

The greatwolf watches all this and makes its own silent assessments.

Chapter Text

The Darkmoon and his Unkindled killed a number of flies. The fire kept them dead and hindered the living. That alone gave Vilhelm a fighting chance.

He had no other advantages. He was unarmed, half conscious. Trying to stem the blood pulsing from his throat with one hand and slap away maggots with the other. Drowning inside his helmet. He had to take it off, had to breathe. That gave the worms access to his eyes, nose, and mouth. He could not say whether any of them found their way in. Did not want to know. His mind slid away from him and kept him from knowing. But they were everywhere. The flies spat them out in endless numbers. 

The flames were everywhere and they did not take him. Too slow yet. Too small to combat the dark and the wet and the red and the rot.

The buzzing was everywhere. In his mind, in his bones. 

’Tis nearly time, faithful servant, Father Death said to him. All your life you have wielded my gifts. Now I come to take them back.

Father Death. Vilhelm learned that name from the headsmen and sellswords he knew as a young man. Death was never just death to them, but a paternal figure with two faces, one kindly and one fearsome.

Vilhelm spat his blood at both of them.

Not like this.

His hand landed on a piece of wood half sunk in the muck. He pulled it free of its mound of fungus and swung it blindly at the flames until, by some miracle, the damp wood caught fire. At once the maggots shriveled and fell away from him. The flies circling him shied from his burning brand. 

Vilhelm lost himself after that. Only one thought remained in his mind: to find the steps up to the church before his torch went out. In service of that thought, he let everything else go. Elegance. Dignity. Knightly pride. The flies could have it all as long as he died away from their greedy mouths.

The rest was a wet red blur. Trying to run, slipping, stumbling, feet sinking into patches of rot. His torch carving bright fiery lines on the air and his vision. Staggering and coughing up blood, always getting up again, torch between his teeth because he needed his hands to catch himself. And then, finally, collapsing on the blessedly dry steps, half crawling now. Gagging up blood and maggots that he would not believe were real. The stairs going on and on - were there always so many? Climbing the last few paces on his knees.

His body gave out at the top, crumpling onto the pavers of Lady Elfriede’s church. His mouth and nostrils were full of iron. He pressed his hand to his rended throat and tried to work a heal. Impossible. He had no talisman and no strength. The incantation faltered and guttered before it could accomplish much.

The painter came and knelt beside him. Her little face said, How the tables have turned.

Vilhelm opened his hand to the flames on the floor. They climbed up his fingers, but they did not burn. He watched them outline the melody of a song he had almost forgotten, and knew no more.

~~~

Friede’s great scythe is still on the floor of Father Ariandel’s room, where she let it fall. So is her blood: a long trail of it down the center of the chamber. The flames are licking at it even though the life in it is long gone. 

She feels more like herself once she has her weapon in her hand. She runs her palm along the familiar grooves in the shaft, the runes etched into the blade. Her hands settle into position as easily as if she’d never let her scythe go. She holds it low on her right side, a deceptive stance that is not as idle as it appears. 

Further below, in the charnel pit, red insect eyes glint amidst the flames dancing on the pool of blood. The air is filled with the whir of wings and the hungry sucking of many mouthparts. What a horrid cesspool Friede has created. Dunstan was right to accuse her of being no better than Gwyn, and perhaps some part of her knew it all along. Fire linked or fire suppressed, it all ends in rot. 

Friede thinks of Vilhelm, dying soaked in blood upstairs, and a lock clicks open inside her. Her blackflame surges up without thought or fear. She passes her hand over the blade of her scythe and kindles it black and silver.

Gesturing for Yorshka to stay at the base of the steps, Friede strides to the center of the catacombs. The blood drags at her skirts. The flies gather around her at a wary distance. She hardly notices the flames on the floor.

Friede swings her scythe once, twice, turning as she goes. The arcs send twin waves of blackflame searing across the room. Every remaining fly falls burning and shrieking to the ground.

She catches a glimpse of her reflection wavering in the pool. She is taut and still and her eyes are full of hate.

~~~

For a time there is only the red of pain and the black of death. The red is always at his throat. The black sits at his heels, so very close but never touching him, never granting release. And so the executioner is denied the swift, clean death he dealt to so many others. The rot he brought upon Ariandel has come back to him at last. 

It would be poetic if it weren’t happening to him.

Somewhere in his agonized limbo, he becomes aware that death has withdrawn from him. He is no longer choking on blood. There is still iron in his throat, but not enough to drown him. 

Then there is less of it.

And less.

He claws himself back to consciousness and spits the last of the blood from his mouth.

The painter is looking at him. Scales like cracked, dry earth. Burning orange eyes. Vilhelm has the vaguest, pain-hazed recollection that she was here before. Her face holds curiosity and mild surprise, and something gentle too. Whatever that is, Vilhelm resents it.

“Thou’rt passing stubborn,” the girl says.

Vilhelm does not answer. He is hesitant to test his powers of speech. Though the four slashes across his throat have miraculously closed, healing is always imperfect in this place, and he expects his voice to be ruined. Come to think of it, who granted him healing? He remembers attempting it himself, but by then he was far too weak to close his mortal wounds.

A question for another time. He has a more pressing concern.

The painter addresses it for him, sparing him the trouble of asking: “Lady Yorshka and Lady Friede make for the tower above the champion’s grave.”

That jolts Vilhelm back to full consciousness.

My lady lives?

“She came for thee, knowest thou?” the girl goes on. “She thought it best to leave thee to thy rest.”

Then Lady Elfriede saw him in this pathetic state, hardly able to sit up?

Vilhelm almost smiles. His sense of propriety is coming back: that’s a good sign. It means his body senses that the worst of the danger has passed. Down in the pit, there was no room for propriety. Nothing but survival.

He gets to his feet after several attempts, with considerably less grace than he would like. The first few times, blackness sweeps in from the corners of his vision and forces him back down. The painter watches without malice. Her gaze provides motivation. Filthy and fragile he may be, but Vilhelm is not going to speak to his former captive on his knees.

When he is upright and leaning on the chapel wall, shaking with his efforts, he considers the painter’s first sentence more carefully. Only then does the name “Yorshka” stick in his mind. He does not recall hearing it before. It must belong to one of that trio of intruders who loosed Ariandel’s flame. The girl with the dragon tail?

“The crossbreed girl…is here still?” Vilhelm’s voice is a raven’s croak. It hurts, but it works.

The painter smiles and scampers away, up a ladder and into the attic. As always, she leaves Vilhelm with a deep unease. She knows too much. She was so calm when he shut her in the library. Vilhelm knew then that some plot was afoot; now everything is on fire. How quickly it all unraveled.

Well, no matter. Despite his dire failure, Vilhelm still accounts himself Lady Elfriede’s knight. He will find her. She will know what to do.

Now he needs a sword.

~~~

Their hems are inches deep in red by the time they reach the illusory wall at the end of the pit and emerge into cleaner air. With her white skirt dyed in blood, Yorshka looks more like a tragic saint than ever. Is this why she chose not to wear more practical traveling clothes? Perhaps she wanted Ariandel to mark her in this way. Now she can carry a reminder of its suffering with her, an added impetus to do whatever it is she must do at the end of her journey.

Friede searches the girl’s face in the pale winter light, looking for signs that this is all too much. She finds none. No matter the sorrow in Yorshka’s blue eyes, her countenance is set and calm. Friede wonders what horror might be building up inside her, biding its time until she can no longer prevent it from exploding.

Yorshka goes to the open doorway and looks down at the tower far below. It is just visible amidst the snarl of branches tangling down the cliffside. Most of the structure has been eroded by time. All that remains is a hollow drum ringed by tiers of arched windows. One of the middle floors does appear to be intact, however, if they can only reach it.

Yorshka bows her head, murmuring something not meant for Friede’s ears. “’Tis the first I will set foot in mine home since my mother was slain,” she says softly. “An Undead took her life. Ere she died she pushed me from our tower and into Anor Londo, where my dear brother found me. Can this place still be home when ’tis haunted by such pain?”

Friede has no skill for this sort of thing. She and her sisters always believed that kindness would distract them from their goals. For Yorshka’s sake, she tries to find it.

“This is thine home still, and thy memories of it still thine own,” she says. “Remember it as thou wilt. That power is thine alone. Let not one vile Undead take it from thee.”

Yorshka takes a shaky little breath and nods. “Of course not.”

“Thou livest, and thou’rt returned to thy birthplace. Reclaim what thy mother's killer stole from thee.”

Old words, Londor words, but Friede thinks they apply.

Yorshka seems to agree. Without so much as a backward glance, she sits down in the doorway and drops onto the first branch. The huge limbs are slick with melting ice and snow, and Friede’s breath catches when she sees Yorshka’s left foot start to slide out from under her. But the girl is more capable than she appears. Yorshka drops to her knees and presses herself as close and low against the branch as she can manage. There she remains until her balance returns to her and she is able to straighten up. It seems someone has taught the girl a few practical skills.

Friede exhales, more relieved than she can explain.

Yorshka waves for Friede to follow. Friede wills herself to become light as drifting snow and lets her limbs move of their own accord. Crouch, leap. She lands with a jolt and drives her scythe into the branch to anchor herself. 

“Perhaps ‘twould be best were I to go ahead of thee and catch thee, child,” she says. After all, there is no one else to protect Yorshka just now. The greatwolf has vanished, though Friede does not think it is far away. She can all but feel its eyes on her.

Despite the world burning around her, Yorshka smiles. She runs a hand sheepishly through her hair. “Perhaps it would.”

~~~

He is weak as a babe and wracked with remnants of fever. Fortunately, the Farron followers roaming the woods are no livelier than he is. Now that the flame is kindled, they’ve gone so hollow that they don’t seem to care what happens to them. It doesn’t take much to ambush one of the smaller stragglers. Vilhelm presses him to the ground and holds him by the neck until his halfhearted struggles cease. 

Vilhelm rolls onto his back on the wet, snow-melted ground, recovering his breath. He almost does not notice the flames flickering all around him. He takes this as a warning that he is not immune to the ennui overcoming the painting’s inhabitants and steels his resolve. He has no intention of lying down to burn like them.

(Never mind that he does not know what he is going to do instead.)

While he rests, a crow flutters down black as the Abyss and lands on his knee. You cannot eat my eyes, he thinks. Despite all appearances, I am not yet quite dead. 

He jerks his leg to scare the bird off. It does not fly away. It cocks its head, beady eyes glinting, and says in a creaking, reedy voice, “You all right, love?”

Vilhelm is so surprised that he laughs, a painful wheezing sound he would not have recognized as mirth had it not come from his own lips. What is happening? Surely he must be delirious. If not, then the crow is either mimicking something it overheard, or it is a ghost. The ghost of someone Vilhelm knew long ago. The ghost of someone he killed, come back to mock him. He wants to believe it is the latter. That would be easier. He recognizes the crow’s rustic accent, though. Traces of it still linger in Vilhelm’s own speech, even all these years later.

“You all right, love?” the bird repeats.

Vilhelm gives it a grin more weary and sardonic than fierce. “I might be worse.”

~~~

They descend the rest of the branches without incident. Each time Yorshka drops into Friede’s arms, Friede is startled by how small and light the girl is. Just a bundle of twigs and bird bones. Too little to witness all this rot, and too delicate to for Friede’s battle-hardened hands.

And yet, not so delicate. When at last they land on a bridge leading to the tower’s sole intact floor, Yorshka’s face is as set as ever. She looks down the bridge with great solemnity, folds her hands, and makes a curtsy.

“I am home, Mother. I come to learn what I may be.”

Yorshka has just taken her first step when Friede senses something shift. A flicker in the fabric of the world like a cloud passing across the sun. 

She grips Yorshka’s arm harder than she meant to. “Take heed. We are not alone.”

With her free hand Friede lifts her scythe into its ready position, the blade aligned with the curve of her bloodied hem. 

Yorshka squints down the bridge. “I see noth -”

Red light wells up from the stones not far from where they stand. A phantom rises from it, garbed in feathered robes and a blindfold that covers most of his head. In his gauntleted right hand he holds a katana, and in his left a flame smolders. The apparition is deep purple: a maddened phantom who no longer recognizes friend from foe.

Oh, Kaathe, grant me strength!

Paralysis grips Friede in an ice-cold vice. A pyromancer. A mad pyromancer at that. She can manage the flames on the ground if she doesn’t think too much, but this…

Yorshka makes a small, frightened noise.

Friede takes a tighter grip on her scythe. This invader is nothing and no one, she tells herself. She has a flame of her own and a charge to protect.

Friede pushes Yorshka behind her just as the invader lets a flaming orb drift into the air. Embers arc towards Friede, seeking the heat of her body. She is too fast. She has already launched herself at the invader by the time the embers start to fly. The two combatants meet in the center of the bridge, dancing in a tight circle of clashing blades. Sparks fly where the pyromancer’s katana meets Friede’s scythe. 

The invader breaks away and braces his katana in front of him. Friede recognizes the parry stance just in time to check her last blow. Rather than fall prey to the bait, she leaps nimbly backward and sweeps her scythe low over the stones. Frost bursts from the ground and spikes towards the invader, first small icicles and then large ones. They catch the pyromancer’s feet and drive him to his knees, but not before he slams his left hand into the stones.

Fiery circles appear in a ring around Friede. Red like the deep earth’s core, red like the promise of eruption.

Friede throws herself out of this ring of death and presses herself flat against the side of the bridge. Flame pillars explode from the ground a moment later. In this narrow space, Friede scarcely has enough room to avoid them. The nearest one rushes up so close to her that the heat sets the old burn scar on her face aching afresh. Friede bites her lip and shuts her eyes against the glare. Her heart is hammering fit to make her sick. The roar of flame has stolen her breath.

She has no time to recover. Before she can blink the spots from her vision, the pyromancer lunges at her between the fading flame pillars. Friede twists hard to one side. The katana clangs against the side of the bridge. In the little space she has, Friede swings at the phantom’s side. Her scythe cuts into the meat of his abdomen. He staggers away to reposition himself, clutching his side.

Friede knows now that she cannot let him have any distance. That will only invite him to use his pyromancy, and Friede isn’t sure how much more of that her nerves can stand. 

If thou wilt not come to me, I shall come to thee.

She jumps up and lets herself vanish into the cold air. All the snow on the bridge has melted, leaving nothing to betray Friede’s footprints. When she lands and slips behind the phantom, he has no way of knowing where she is. 

She is drawing her scythe back to impale him when the invader moves. Some stirring of air has alerted his blindfold-heightened senses to her presence, perhaps. He whirls away just in time, but not quite fast enough. The tip of Friede’s scythe clips his shoulder.

As soon as he has enough distance, the phantom draws back his arm and tosses a fire orb. This time Friede is quicker to close with him. She drops into a low dash, and the fire orb flies harmlessly over her head to splatter on the stones. 

Friede catches the invader with his arm still raised and crashes right through his hasty one-handed guard. The phantom loses his balance and topples backwards into the wall of the bridge. Pinning him there, Friede conjures her smaller, frosty scythe in her left hand and sinks it into the pyromancer’s stomach. The blade scrapes past the bronze warding ornaments on his robes and finds its sure path inward. 

The phantom shudders beneath Friede’s weight. For a few hopeful seconds she thinks he is about to pitch over the low rail to his end. Then his left hand flashes up. A burst of fire snaps from his palm, inches from Friede’s chest.

At once she is back in Father Ariandel’s basement chapel, where Dunstan used the same spell right in her face. She is reeling back just as she did then. Her scythe tears from the pyromancer’s gut.

The invader lurches upright, leaning heavily on the side of the bridge. With his left hand he lifts a golden-orange ball of light to head height. It emits a soft, sweet hum. Friede does not need to be told that this is some sort of healing pyromancy. Even as she swats at the sparks eating tiny holes in her dress, she can feel its warmth slip inside her, steadying her heart and invigorating her limbs. An unintended gift the invader is going to regret.

The phantom closes with Friede again. This time his swordplay is tight - he does not want to stray far from his life-giving light. Friede tightens her own movements in response, parrying the invader’s katana with her smaller scythe and taking cross-slashes with both of them. More than once she breaks his guard and opens cuts on his chest and arms. He fails to nick her even once.

The orb of light fades, and the phantom slows. He is nearing the end of his endurance. Friede cracks off a flare of blackflame under his chin - ’tis a game two can play - to disrupt his rhythm. In the few seconds of his disorientation, Friede leaps and lands behind him, invisible as wind.

The invader is too slow to turn. When he finds Friede again, both her scythes are already crossed over his throat. She guillotines him with one neat tug of her arms.

The phantom collapses, sinking first to his knees and then onto his face. He moves so slowly, as if his spirit body cannot fathom the fact of its own death. Father Death, as Vilhelm would say, does not care. The invader is already fading into dust when his cheek touches the wet stones. A few seconds more, and he is gone. He leaves only scorch marks behind to mark his last duel. The flame he held in his left hand smolders on the ground. So innocent it is now, without a hand to wield it.

Friede lets her great scythe fall heavily to her side, blade scraping stone. Blood rushes to her head and her breath goes out of her in a great heave. Black spots dance across her vision. Her legs are shaking beneath her. Her mind is full of fire. In her memory she burns in the Old Lord’s flame, down to her soul, so deep she still bears a scar when she awakens from her ashes - 

And yet she is still here. She fought a pyromancer and emerged unscathed. Her chest spasms with suppressed laughter. A fierce heat all her own races through her and a wild voice in her mind asks, What hast thou now to fear?

Plenty, but she can think about that later.

Still trembling, Friede looks up at the cliffs above the tower and sees the greatwolf standing high above, tiny and distant. It lifts its head to the cinder-filled sky and howls. A warning? A salute to the fallen invader? Surely it could not be an approval of Friede's victory.

A small whimper brings her back to herself. For the first time since the duel began, she remembers Yorshka.

The girl is standing at the start of the bridge, very white and still. Friede slings her scythe into the straps on her back and makes her way to Yorshka on unsteady legs. Was she hurt by stray embers? She does not appear burned, but her pallor warns that she is about to slide into shock. 

Friede kneels so her eyes are level with Yorshka’s. “What aileth thee, child?”

“Knewest thou that dark spirit?” Yorshka speaks in the flat, brittle voice of someone trying very hard to keep from shattering.

“Nay. I know only that he was maddened and would have slain us both without thought. Such phantoms make no distinctions. Any and all may be their victims.”

“He…” Yorshka folds her hands so tight the knuckles go white. “He was my father. Dunnel. This I feel in mine heart, though I know not how I know. I was not acquainted with him. He lived not with my mother and me. Mother told me he went in search of the witch Quelana, that he might learn her arts to protect us both…”

And he returned to find his lover dead and his daughter, still a babe, gone without a trace. That must have been when he lost his mind. Friede can guess full well how the sorry tale unfolded. It was not an unusual tragedy for those who dwelt outside Anor Londo’s high, safe walls. 

And now Friede knows why Yorshka has such compassion for the lost and alone: she was lost too. Her family was torn from her by senseless violence, leaving an innocent child to build something new. And she has. Yorshka isn’t a fool at all. She is wounded, and she has turned her pain to purpose.

Now fate has rewarded her by denying her the chance to bid her father farewell.

“He did not know thee,” Friede says as gently as she can. “Mad dark spirits shed all they once were when they begin to build their mounds of bones. Their victims are their family. ’Tis their escape from suffering.”

Yorshka’s eyes shimmer with unshed tears. “’Twas grief that drove him to it?”

“I fear so.”

Yes, child, he went mad because he loved thee and thy mother. What a terrible thing love is. Perhaps he could not quite forget it even when his mind slipped from him. His spirit guarded Priscilla’s tower all these ages, though surely he no longer knew why.

“’Tis no fault of thine,” Friede says. “’Tis no fault of any save thy mother’s killer. May fire take them and may their name be forgotten. Thy best recourse now is to live and live well, and do what thou’rt here to do. This tower is thine.”

Friede does not know where these words are coming from. The turmoil of the journey and her duel with the pyromancer seem to have loosened her tongue.

It isn’t enough, though. Yorshka diminishes before Friede’s eyes, shoulders slumping, breath shuddering.

“Lady Friede,” she says, “wilt thou hold me?”

Yearning swells within Friede, that desire for warmth that Yuria always said would be her downfall. “Forgive me, but I cannot. I have neither the right nor the knowledge to offer thee comfort.” It’s her brother Yorshka needs, and Friede is a poor substitute.

Twin tears spill down Yorshka’s cheeks. She does not look like a saint now, just a girl in a bloodstained dress whose hurt is too big for her to hold. 

“Please.”

This is too much to deny. Friede slips off her cloak and tucks it around Yorshka. She notices again how small the girl is. Then, with unaccustomed, awkward movements, she puts her arms around Yorshka too.

Yorshka does the rest, bless her. He body folds against Friede’s chest and her thin arms circle Friede’s waist and her head comes to rest on Friede’s shoulder, and then she is shaking with huge, heartbroken sobs and Friede is afraid she will come apart. She cannot protect Yorshka from this.

“Hush thee,” she says - words she once spoke to Father Ariandel. That was a deceit, but this must be genuine. Her mouth bends and softens in unfamiliar ways. “Hush thee, small one.”

It occurs to Friede then that this is a battle, too: against her own withered soul rather than an invader. It also occurs to her that even amidst grief, Yorshka has given her yet another chance.

~~~

When he is alone, Vilhelm strips off his blood-soaked armor and scrubs himself raw with handfuls of snow. Then he dresses in the Farron follower’s gear: a laborious process. It takes him an age to do up all the buckles with his feeble, shaky hands. It’s a shame to lose his fine Londor accoutrements, but they are a liability. He cannot go about covered in the filth of the fly pit; he’ll attract every hungry wolf for miles around. Better to look like a ragged vagabond than be killed.

The follower’s saber is smaller and lighter than the weapons Vilhelm is used to. For all its speed, it lacks the staying power of his greatsword, which the Unkindled took from him. It will have to do. He takes a few experimental swings, promptly unbalances amidst a wave of dizziness, and drops to one knee. Fine start.

Vilhelm takes the follower’s torch, too. He thinks rather fondly of torches since his ordeal in the pit. This one lets loose a stream of fire when he breathes on it. Good: he may need that power where he is going. The quickest (and perhaps the only) way to the top of that tower is through the catacombs he so narrowly escaped.

He has to rest yet again when he returns to the church. He’s lost so much blood and he has the stamina of a dry leaf. This is going to be a very slow journey, isn’t it?

The painter emerges from her attic and follows Vilhelm all the way down the steps to the bottom of the pit. The stone stairs are spattered with his blood - but there are no maggots, Dark be praised. If it frightens the dragon girl, she does not show it, nor does she react to the death-stench emanating from that hellish doorway.

“Thou’rt armed this time,” she observes.

“I am quite aware.” 

Vilhelm’s sarcasm costs him: speaking is still like swallowing broken glass. He cannot tell if the painter is insulting him or trying to encourage him, for some nonsensical reason of her own.

He realizes then that his hand is clenched around the stone doorframe, and his body will not let him release it. His fingers are trembling, and not only from weakness. He forces himself to regulate his breathing, ignore the frightened animal part of his mind, and think only of what his surroundings tell him. Warriors of Londor are not ruled by fear.

It’s the sounds Vilhelm notices first - or rather, the absence of sounds. The horrible buzzing and sucking noises that he thought would be the last things he ever heard have fallen silent. He sees no red eyes in the darkness either. He dares not assume that the fire has killed all the remaining flies - but what a welcome development that would be!

The painter has noticed the silence as well. “Lady Friede cleared the way, ‘twould seem,” she says, and does not elaborate.

“My lady is well enough to fight?”

“Oh, yes. I daresay so.”

“What business has she with the crossbreed girl?”

“Go down and see.”

Before Vilhelm can grab hold of the painter and question her further, she gives him an impish tip of her cap and darts back up the stairs. She is much too quick for him in his weakened state. All he can do is glare in her direction. Why is no one in this forsaken place capable of giving a clear answer?

He stands in the doorway for some time, gathering himself. Reminding himself that he is not defenseless now. Accustoming himself to the cloying, rotten smell until it is just a fact, not a nightmare. When at last he unclenches his fingers from the stones, his knuckles ache.

The moment Vilhelm’s boots touch the pool of blood, his whole body goes rigid, screaming silently for him to turn back. He does not listen. Cannot listen. He has a duty still. To reassure himself, he lifts his torch and blows on it to spread a gout of flame. That will catch anything that might be hovering in the dark nearby, poised to spit worms. Nothing falls burning to the floor. By the firelight Vilhelm can see that the only flies near him are dead, lying blackened in the murk with holes burned in their wings.

He feels a savage flare of pride. Well done, my lady. Fearsome as ever.

It soon becomes clear that Elfriede has been thorough: there is nothing left alive in the pit. All Vilhelm has to do is walk. 

That is a task in itself.

After what seems an eternity, Vilhelm touches the illusory wall at the far end of the room. Outside, he assesses the tangled branches spreading down to the old tower. His better judgment informs him that this is a very foolish idea. It’s all he can do to stand; he is no state to be climbing down a sheer cliffside. He is liable to fall to a sudden, undignified stop. Then all his struggles to survive will have been in vain.

Vilhelm’s better judgment adds that it will be in vain no matter what he does: Elfriede has clearly fallen and Ariandel is lost. He pushes that voice aside. This will all make sense once he finds his lady; it always does.

He must be cautious. If he makes a mistake, he isn’t going to get another second chance.

He takes a breath of the cold, fire-sharp air and sits down against the wall to ready himself.


~~~


Eventually, Yorshka’s sobs subside into sniffles. Her little body goes limp and heavy. She looks up at her guardian with eyes threaded with red. 

“I suppose I must go now,” she says, her voice thick. She gestures down the bridge at the tower’s intact floor. “To learn what I must learn.”

“‘Twould do thee good to rest,” Friede says. “Thou’rt stronger than I first judged thee, yet I think thou’rt yet too fragile for further revelations.”

Friede does not add that she fears what Yorshka might learn. Not because it will have anything to do with Friede's future or purpose, but because it will undoubtedly bring change.

Yorshka does not take much convincing. She isn’t ready, and she knows it. She nods dully and sits down on the bridge, and Friede sits down beside her. Yorshka nestles against her guardian’s shoulder. This time it doesn’t feel quite so strange.

Friede has not forgotten how Yorshka took her arm at the council in Leyndell, or the longing she did not want to acknowledge.

She holds Yorshka until, against all odds, the girl falls asleep.

Chapter Text

Gwyndolin and his siblings spend many evenings together in the days leading up to their departure for world’s end. Sometimes they try to predict what lies ahead; sometimes they share old memories. Gwyndolin welcomes the conversations no matter their content. They keep his mind off Yorshka and how she is doing (he tells himself he would have felt it if something terrible had happened to her). They also remind him pleasantly of the informal councils he had with Miquella and Eira before he went home to usher in Dark. Everything came around right that time, didn’t it? It will this time too.

They always hold their discussions in Gwyndolin’s room in Ursa’s infirmary (he still considers it his). He sits on the window seat. Gwynevere reclines on the bed with her chin propped in her hand. Gwynhael leans on the wall, shaking one leg to divert his restless energy. They all have their positions. In this way nothing has changed since they were children plotting pranks against their father. 

But other things are off. Gwynhael is more tense than Gwyndolin remembers, Gwynevere harder around the edges. Gwyndolin knows he must look different to them too, and not just because his serpents and ornate clerical robes are gone. They all have to get to know each other again, preferably before they have to fight alongside each other. Sitting with his brother and sister, Gwyndolin is often struck by the familiar terror that they, along with every good thing that has happened to him of late, will disappear if he looks away from them for too long. A few days is not enough time to make up for an age of separation.

Many of their conversations have to do with where and what world’s end is. Gael gave Dunstan no clear information, of course. Neither of Gwyndolin’s siblings recall hearing of such a place, either as children or in their travels since. At first Gwyndolin believes himself as ignorant as they, except… There was that tale Ludleth told Yorshka while they rested at Firelink Shrine, awaiting Dunstan’s return with Prince Lothric’s soul.

“Lord Ludleth spoke of a human city at the edge of the world,” Gwyndolin tells his brother and sister one evening. “A place of shining domes and towers with their heads in the clouds, ringed by a shield wall of rock. A world in a shell. I thought the story a familiar one, a legend I heard as a child perhaps. Yet when I sought to recall it, it…shimmered and vanished. There was no such city in Lordran, was there?”

Gwynevere and Gwynhael exchange looks. Recognition alights in their eyes and just as quickly disappears.

“I recall hearing such tales also, from Father’s own lips,” Gwynevere says, “and yet… How strange. ’Tis as thou sayest, Lin: I cannot bring them to mind. Hast thou the same difficulty, Hael?”

Gwynhael smiles faintly at his old nickname. At first he seemed reluctant to accept it. He left that name behind when he left Anor Londo, he said. But of late he has begun to reclaim it. Hael is more now than a son of Anor Londo, just as Lin is.

“Aye, ’tis,” he says, and the merriment in his eyes winks out. “Who was this Lord Ludleth?”

“A pygmy of Courland, if my memory be true,” Gwyndolin says.

“And how is it that a pygmy lord knew a tale that the children of Gwyn can scarce recall? We once knew all lands touched by Fire, even unto the edge of the world. This city should not escape our minds.”

Gwynevere’s brown eyes flash. “Might it be some deceit of Father’s? We know well he held his secrets close.”

“Nay, I believe this flaw in our memories is more than a lie,” Gwyndolin says, “and ’tis too subtle to be Father’s work.”

In fact, it seems more like the sort of art Miquella might wield. Gwyndolin might have learned it himself had he devoted more study to that particular branch of deceptive magic. He preferred not to tamper directly with others’ minds, however. That always seemed too intrusive even by the dubious moral standards he kept in those days.

“One of Father’s allies, then,” Gwynhael says. “One more crafty than he. Seath, perhaps?”

“We do not yet know that this city at world’s end, if it be a real place, is aught to do with Father,” Gwyndolin says. This does not dispel the knot in his stomach. If world’s end concerns the fate of Fire, then there is every chance it bears Gwyn’s mark. “And if this is the place to which Gael leadeth, it is not the place Dunstan and I see in our ash dreams. That is no city of shining domes and towers. It is a barren fire-scoured ruin.”

“’Tis true. We cannot know that Lord Ludleth and Gael spoke of the same world’s end. Mayhaps one is a place and the other a time.”

“They may yet be the same,” Gwynevere counters. “Perhaps the ash place is the ending of Lord Ludleth’s tale, though he knew it not. If the ashes are all the world’s ruins as thou sayest, Lin, then this city we cannot recall surely lieth among them.”

It’s a shrewd point. Gwynevere was always cleverer than Gwyn knew. She might have made him a fine counselor had he seen that beauty was not her only asset. Gwyndolin is proud to hear her speak freely even as her words send an inexplicable shiver through him. 

“Then what link between the city and the ashes?” Gwyndolin asks. “It cannot merely be that the city burned like all else, or Gael would not trouble to lead us there. Might something in that place be the cause of the world’s burning?”

He shivers again as he says this. He recognizes the feeling for what it is: a premonition.

“What else might it be but firelinking in excess?” Gwynhael says. As ever, he takes the bluntest and simplest course.

“That was once the warning of the ash dreams, ‘tis true,” Gwyndolin says, wishing it were still so clear. “But we altered that course of events when we extinguished the flame.”

“Fire will return - that is the natural cycle. The people of that distant time may repeat our kindred’s errors.”

“So we thought, yet upon seeing Ariandel rot for lack of fire, mine Unkindled proposed an alternative circumstance: that humans might one day prevent the flame’s return, seeking to prolong their age as we did ours. ‘Tis Dunstan’s belief that unchecked Dark might manifest as seas of blackflame.”

“Hence the ashes.” Gwynhael strokes his chin in thought. There is so much of Gwyn in this gesture, though the firstborn has no beard through which to run his fingers. “And the secret of this mortal conspiracy lieth in the city at world’s end? Gael seeketh our aid to undo it, mayhaps?”

It’s as sensible a theory as any. Still, something gnaws at the back of Gwyndolin’s mind, some certainty that this version of events is not right. A piece has been placed into a slot that is almost but not quite a match. Or a piece is missing entirely. Gwyndolin is not yet certain which, and it disquiets him. He has always liked to have answers.

Meanwhile, Gwynevere voices her own separate suspicions: “If this conspiracy is yet distant in time, why do we struggle so to recall the city? If its dire secret hath yet to be born, no one yet hath cause to efface it from our minds.”

Gwynhael smiles, without mirth this time. The bitterness sits ill on his face. “Be not so certain of that, sister. The city may hold more than one secret. I do not trust that Father hid nothing there he wished never to come to light. A kingdom at the edge of the world where few dare to travel… ‘Twould be a fine place to conceal unsavory things, would it not?”

It would - for Gwyn, for future humans defying the natural order, or for both. 

Gwyndolin rests his head against the cool glass of the window. Suddenly he is very tired of secrets and lies. He has had a lifetime of them already. That was more than enough.

“Then I suppose we must ask which conspiracy Gael wisheth us to set right, if conspiracies there be,” he murmurs. His voice is thin and weary. For once he sounds as ancient as he is.

Without a word, Gwynevere rises and pads to his side. She takes Gwyndolin’s head in her gentle hands and guides it down onto her shoulder. Her fingers slip into his hair, coiling it up behind his head. Her touch is a shelter, like Gwyndolin’s most beloved shawl. Even all these years later, Gwynevere knows what her brother needs without him asking. It’s as if no time at all has passed since he was a child throwing himself facedown on his bed after yet another failed attempt to learn the sword. She always came to him on those nights, soothing his strained muscles with her magic and wiping the tears from his dusty cheeks.

“I told thee thou wouldst be great once thou hadst found thy place,” Gwynevere says. She said this after every one of Gwyndolin’s humiliating practice sessions. She must be remembering those nights too. “And great indeed thou art become. But thou needst not be great alone. All thy dear ones go with thee to meet this new trial - the kin of thine heart and the kin of thy blood.”

Gwyndolin lets himself be a child for a moment. He turns his head and rests his brow on Gwynevere’s shoulder. “They will not be with me through it all. Thou knowest I will not place them in danger unless I have need of it, Vere.”

(How wonderful it is to call her that again! And her real self at that, not her illusion or her portrait.)

“Thine Unkindled will be with thee. I see he hath thy trust and thine affection,” Gwynevere says. She puts her arms around Gwyndolin and sets her chin on top of his head. “And shouldst thou have need of thine other companions, they will come at thy call. We will come.”

Gwynhael’s heavy footfalls approach, and Gwyndolin hears him kneel. His big hand squeezes Gwyndolin’s arm. “Vere and I ought always to have been thy shield and sword. We were not. Thou’rt thine own sword now, I know, and we rejoice to see thee grown so strong. Yet still we account it our duty to protect thee. Whatever lieth in wait at world’s end, we will fight with thee, as we did not do all those years thou wert alone.”

At this Gwyndolin lifts his head, looking back and forth between his siblings, making sure he meets both their gazes. “No more of that. If ye will fight with me, let it be only for love, not for duty or debts or shame. I have said I do not hold you to account for mine own choices. On that I will not be swayed.”

“Father’s choices, not thine,” Gwynhael mutters.

Gwyndolin hears too much of his own conflicts with Yorshka in all this. “I am no longer Father’s obedient, downtrodden daughter,” he says, not angry but firm. “In the kiln I broke his power over me and buried all that remained of mine old self.”

“We only wish to look after thee, Lin,” Gwynevere says, placating.

Gwyndolin ignores her. “I love you both dearly and I am glad of your aid, but I stand on my feet now. Ye must understand this if ye are to fight with me. I am not a broken bird to nurse. I am not your means of rectifying your failings. I am no less than myself.”

Softly though Gwyndolin spoke, hurt and confusion dart across his siblings’ faces. Gwyndolin knows what he asks of them is not easy, for he still has not reconciled himself to Yorshka’s growing up. Of course his brother and sister remember him very differently from how he is now and they have not yet accustomed themselves to him. But he will not retreat. He spent too much of his life trying to be what others expected of him.

He takes one of each his siblings’ hands in his. “Believe I am your equal in all ways now. Have faith in me.”

Gwynhael looks at the floor. He does not reply, but he does not let go of Gwyndolin’s hand either. He has never been comfortable with delicate matters like this.

Gwynevere speaks for them both. She kisses Gwyndolin’s brow and says, “Thou hast it always.”

~~~

By now Dunstan knows not to question Gwyndolin on the night before a journey: it only ever starts an argument. Thus, as they sit side by side in the Erdtree Sanctuary’s glass-walled conservatory, copper Erdlight and silver moonglow mingling on the floor, Dunstan asks just one thing:

“Are you well enough for this?”

Gwyndolin strikes a discordant note on Miquella’s lap harp, which he has been plucking at. “Unkindled.”

“I’m not asking because I think you’re weak. I’m asking because Miquella told me he’s worried about your heart.”

“He told -! Oh, of course he did. I might have guessed he would. Fret not. Miquella is not overly concerned, nor am I.”

“But if we’re right and there’s too much Dark at world’s end, and it’s stronger than it is at home…what will that do to you? You have a Fire soul.”

Gwyndolin looks at him hard. Dunstan has no trouble discerning the spark of resolution in his eyes. “I will endure, as always. Now go home and bid thy wife farewell, Unkindled.”

Dunstan goes. There is no more he can do here.

Elisabeth is waiting for him in the small sitting room of their house in Irithyll, as if she knew he would come. She probably did. Her keen senses are not limited to the physical. She says nothing as Dunstan sits down beside her on the sofa. She just takes his hands and puts her brow against his and holds him there, breathing with him, until her heartbeat aligns with his. Their togetherness is all touch and gesture. It has been so since the first time Elisabeth held out her hand and turned Dunstan’s collected souls into strength. Here in the dark, they do not need speech.

After a while, Elisabeth moves their clasped hands to rest on the growing curve of her belly. Remember who awaiteth thy return and take care, that gesture says. Thou’rt leaving much behind.

Dunstan intended to go straight back to Leyndell to make a few last-minute predictions as to what might lie ahead. Elisabeth has other plans. With her gentle, inexorable authority, she pulls Dunstan’s head onto her shoulder. She is so warm and her hair smells of candle flames. Dunstan wants to hold her so close that she can feel it after he leaves her to wait for him yet again.

Before he knows it, he is waking to the sound of Irithyll’s bells tolling dawn. He is lying on the hearth rug with Elisabeth’s head on his chest and her legs twined with his.

~~~

They gather in the Erdtree Sanctuary in the morning light. The horned Crucible priests are chanting their dawn prayers in another chamber. Their low voices and sharp incense drift through the halls.

Gwyndolin’s companions all wear his magic silver rings now. They have been specially enchanted not only to transport them between Irithyll and Leyndell, but to function like the summoning runes by which the Undead call for aid or cordial intrusion.

He scans their beloved faces one by one. Eira is poised like she is about to take flight, and Morgott’s cautioning hand rests on her shoulder. Miquella is looking straight through Gwyndolin, as ever. Amalie and Sirris are standing very close together. Something changed between them on their journey to Lothric Castle, and Gwyndolin knows he will be delighted to hear the story. 

Gwynevere looks like she wants to scoop Gwyndolin into her arms, but she is restraining herself. Gwynhael is all but vibrating with the effort of not going to Gwyndolin’s side.

I fear thou wilt have thy chance, brother. I will show thee my wings.

Dunstan stands at Gwyndolin’s right hand, silent and assured in this place of honor he has earned. He keeps sneaking furtive glances at Gwyndolin, like he is afraid Gwyndolin’s heart will fail him on the spot.

Gwyndolin has never much liked making speeches, but with all his loved ones standing before him he feels he must say something to mark this occasion. 

“We go to meet a threat to the natural order,” he says. He speaks softly but with weight. “We go to secure the future. In this we are most grateful for your swords. We shall endeavor not to call you forth into peril unless we are in need.”

Amalie gives him a feral grin. “Oh, come now, sir. That’s not much fun.”

Sirris elbows her in the ribs.

Heartened by this bit of mischief, Gwyndolin goes on. “Stand ready. Our summons may come at any hour. With good fortune, they will not come at all.”

He doubts the likelihood of this even as he says it. For days now he has felt a heaviness pressing down on his chest whenever he thinks about what might lie in wait at world’s end - the secrets as much as the foes, if not more so. He cannot tell if this is merely his habitual tendency towards pessimism or something more serious, like one of Yorshka’s visions.

(Find thyself, my dearest one, and come back to me whole.)

Gwynhael is the first to send Gwyndolin and Dunstan off. When he speaks his words are for them both, but the warrior’s grip in which he clasps Gwyndolin’s hand is for him alone. It is a gesture of honor and regard, of strength recognized. 

“Be ye stone. Be ye steel,” Gwynhael intones, his bright eyes never leaving his brother’s. “May ye stand strong amidst the storm.”

~~~

Gwyndolin and Dunstan return to Irithyll with this dragon-seeker’s blessing etched on their minds. As Yorshka left with the scrap of Ariandel in hand, their hope is that one of Irithyll’s few working bonfires will be strong enough to deliver them to the painted world, where they will seek out Gael. Gwyndolin does not want to return to Ariandel. The temptation to go after Yorshka may prove too great to resist.

As it happens, he doesn’t need to face that temptation at all. Gael has laid preparations, silent and unseen and thorough. 

In the shadows of the archway on the bridge into the city, a new bonfire is waiting.

~~~

Gwyndolin has not used a bonfire since just after the battle at the kiln. The little bone-fed pyres hold painful associations. For him they are forever linked to his own loneliness and cruelty and those first shattering hours after Dark fell. Thus, when the embers sweep him and Dunstan away, he is braced for them to deliver him into sorrow.

He is not prepared to be delivered to the kiln.

The scene before Gwyndolin is seared into his memory. The ashen hillsides curving up to the edge of the world. The faint acrid smell of burnings that have lost their heat. The detritus of ages piled in frozen waves, sundered towers and walls and roofs all bending towards the hilltop. The eclipsed sun, a bleeding wound in the sky.

It is several years since Gwyndolin last stood in this place, yet it might as well have been minutes ago. At once he is hurled back to that great precipice of his life, looking the ruin of Gwyn’s age in the eyes, poised to step into Fire’s crumbling heart and undo everything to which he devoted his soul. The horror and shame and agonizing anticipation are all as fresh now as they were then. Gwyndolin well remembers how he lay down in the ashes and almost did not get up again.

A clump of windborne cinders brushes his cheek and sets his skin crawling. Once the chill is in him, he cannot get it out. His hand slips down to Dunstan’s forearm and clasps it like it is all that is stopping him from falling into the bleeding sky.

“Unkindled,” he breathes.

Dunstan hears everything that single word contains. “You’re all right.”

“I never thought to return to this graveyard of a place.”

“You don’t have to. It’s all behind you now. You built a life and you can go back to it when we’re done here. Don’t you think on this place for one minute. Besides…”

Dunstan tilts his dark head up towards the wounded sun. 

“…have you noticed? It ain’t even the kiln.”

“Of course it is, Unkindled. We stood on this very spot ere we faced the Cinder.”

“It ain’t the same spot. Might not even be the same time. Look at the sun.”

Irritated, Gwyndolin follows Dunstan’s gaze. “I can see the sun full well. How can I possibly be mis - oh.”

The corona dripping down from the eclipse is ghostly white. Only now that his initial shock has passed does Gwyndolin realize that this is not how he remembers it. That ring of light should be…

“It was red the last time we were here, wasn’t it?” Dunstan’s voice is hushed, like he is speaking in a cathedral. He must be as unsettled as Gwyndolin, knowing something is wrong but not knowing what. “What d’you reckon it means?”

Gwyndolin does not know what to say. He has never seen the Darksign burn white, nor even heard of such an occurrence. The sky itself looks darker against that pale glow: inky purples bordering on black, a midnight swallowing all color. As Gwyndolin looks at it, his chest grows heavy. The wintry air feels thick in his lungs. 

He shakes his head, taking careful sips of breath. “Something ill, no doubt.”

“We’ve gone forward in time, maybe, to the end of another cycle. And something’s gone wrong again. ‘Course it has. Why did I expect any different? This is my lot in life.”

Gwyndolin tries to be comforted by Dunstan’s sarcastic grousing, familiar as it is, but the sight before him steals all glimmers of humor. Dunstan is right: this is not the kiln, or at least not the kiln as they knew it. If the wreckage of civilization was a wave before, cresting towards Fire but never breaking, now it is both an ocean and a shore. The whole land of Lothric seems to have washed up below the ledge on which the two companions stand. Layer upon layer of it. Fallen towers have been torn from their foundations like trees from their roots. Buildings are leaning on and melding with each other. Their brickwork interlocks like fingers as they devour their neighbors. Rampart walls and spires are jumbled together like a child’s toys thrown back into their box at haphazard, jarring angles. Blocks and dolls’ legs.

All of it is blanketed in powder, down to the spindly bare trees jutting from what were once courtyards. It looks like snow, but it isn’t. It’s too dusty and gray. This is what is left when the burning goes out. 

Gwyndolin’s vision swims out of focus as he tries to make sense of it all. Bile crawls up his throat and he has to look away. The world is stagnating here just as it was when he and Dunstan first went to the kiln, except…

“It’s worse,” Dunstan says. His hand has not left Gwyndolin’s forearm. “There wasn’t this much…” He gestures at the sea of destruction stretching out before them. “…when we put out the fire.”

So Gael must indeed have brought them forward in time, to an era when Fire has once again been sustained to its limits, and this time no one has done anything to stop it. But if it is firelinking that caused all this, then why that eerie white corona around the Darksign? It should be red; it was always red. And why do all these ruins bend not upwards towards the place where the kiln should be, but away, towards the horizon? Some great power is drawing them there, as if the flame has been moved from its usual resting place. 

Or taken, says a voice in the darkest part of Gwyndolin’s mind. Isn’t that what Dunstan speculated about Friede: that she tried and failed to take the flame into herself, for her own?

Gwyndolin opens his mouth to voice these thoughts. When he inhales, the breath drops into his chest like a lead weight. He starts to cough, muscles spasming, desperate to find the oxygen in the heavy, burn-scented air. Before he knows it, he is leaning into Dunstan, tears of effort in the corners of his eyes. 

The fit passes after a few seconds of gasping and wheezing. Something in his chest unlocks, and Gwyndolin forces himself to take small, light breaths. That seems to help. The air doesn’t weigh on his chest so much when he breathes like this. Still, his exertions leave him feeling drained and cold. He is glad of Dunstan’s big hands on his shoulders, holding him up.

“Are you all right?” the Unkindled asks.

Gwyndolin does not open his eyes or reply. All his attention is focused on the movements of his abdomen, in and out.

“Did you breathe in some ash?”

Still breathless, Gwyndolin nods - though that doesn’t seem quite right. 

He tells himself that must have been what happened. The air is full of gray flakes, the skin of the world peeling away. It would have been easy enough to swallow a few cinders without noticing.

“Feelest thou the weight of the air?” he asks when he can manage some hoarse words. “’Tis like unto water, nay?”

Dunstan says nothing for a long while. His hands tighten on Gwyndolin’s shoulders enough to indicate his concern.


“No,” he murmurs at last. “I don’t feel that myself.” He looks hard into Gwyndolin’s face. “Maybe you should let me go alone. I don’t think this place is going to do you any good.”

That sets Gwyndolin’s pride bristling. Why is it that everyone who cares for him treats him like the slightest breeze will knock him flat? That may have been true once, when he was still a sickly child who could not walk under his own power, but he is no longer that child.

He clears his throat. “Be that as it may, I am here, and I intend to stay. Now let us go down and learn what we may.”

Dunstan does not argue. He does, however, follow closer behind Gwyndolin than strictly necessary.

He is afeared I will fall. Not so, dear Unkindled. I stood at the end of the world once and I shall stand there again if I must.

He tries not to let Dunstan hear how his next breath catches in his chest.

An old Londor pilgrim is sitting in an incongruous chair not far from where Gwyndolin and Dunstan emerged from the bonfire. She has been there so long that the stone lid chained to her back, the seal on the Abyss within her, has fused to her hunched body like a turtle shell. She takes one look at the two travelers and gives a creaky, grating laugh. It sounds like her lungs are full of dust. It also sounds like recognition.

“The Darkmoon and his faithful knight! Here to make things right, are you?” She chuckles. “Well, I doubt an old stone-humped hag could be of use to you. You’ve grander things to do.”

Gwyndolin does not like the derision in her voice. It’s as if she knows some secret that makes Gwyndolin and Dunstan look foolish, and it amuses her to withhold it from them.

“We seek a threat to the order of Fire and Dark,” Gwyndolin says, “for surely ’tis the folly of firelinking that wrought this ruin.”

Again the crone laughs from the depths of her hood. “The great deceiver is deceived! There is no fire here to link, only ashes.”

Dunstan’s hand twitches towards his back, where his claymore is strapped. The onyx blade he took from Vilhelm, hanging sheathless at his left side, is smoldering black and silver. Mirroring his irritation.

“I ain’t no knight,” he says, low and steely. “Never swore any vows. Don’t know who put that into your head, but they were wrong. I’m here because I want to be. All the same, you’d best not speak to Lin like that. He ain’t deceived: a man named Gael told us there would be fire here.”

“Gael?” The old pilgrim tosses her head back and cackles. “Still at his foolishness, is he? Well, he has not told you all he knows. He has led you here from your time like innocent lambs, and now you think to save us all. From what do you seek to save us, bold ones? Do you know what sleeps in the city at world’s end?”

“You’re not going to tell us, I can see that. We should go, Lin.”

“Lin…” The pilgrim is smirking. Gwyndolin can feel it even though her hood hides her face. “My, my, such familiarity. So it is true. What would old Kaathe have thought of it, I wonder?”

Gwyndolin wants to demand an explanation for that, but he is afraid he will start coughing again if he speaks too much. Dunstan is already tugging at his arm to lead him away.

For all its apparent randomness, there is a bizarre order to these heaped dregs of kingdoms. The fallen towers form bridges between structures. The rooftops tilt at such an angle that someone could walk from one to the next without the need to jump. The buildings lean on one another, leaving sheltered pathways below. No matter how the wreckage has drifted, it has done so in such a way as to facilitate passage to that point on the horizon towards which it all bends. It almost seems to have acquired a base consciousness of its own.

Gwyndolin and Dunstan make their way down streets formed by overhanging churches and avenues made of broken walls. Gwyndolin dares not look anywhere but straight ahead. This place makes him dizzy. If he glances to either side, he is seized by the certainty that the buildings are shifting. About to collapse in on them, or else tip them both into the inky void that is the sky.

They do not speak. Their feet whisper in the powder with every step they take. The wind has fallen away now that they are have entered the labyrinth. The only sign of life is a distant, rhythmic sound that might be sobbing. If the world’s heart still beats in this place, it does so only slowly.

Then they come to a fountain, listing to one side in the drifted ash. Gwyndolin’s gaze slides instinctively away from it as soon as he recognizes the fleurons studding its three tiers. They are the same ones that adorn every structure in Irithyll. He knows exactly where this fountain would belong in his own time.

Dunstan notices it too. He stops beside it, running his fingers over the rim. “This is ours.”

Gwyndolin nods and wraps his arms around himself to keep his teeth from chattering. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe without his chest hitching.

Meanwhile, the Unkindled squats down and sifts through the ash at the fountain’s base. After a moment, he gives a soft, disquieted chuckle. “Lin, look at this.”

Gwyndolin does not want to turn around. He has to turn around.

With dread sitting cold in his stomach, he goes to Dunstan’s side.

Words are scrawled across the base of the fountain in black fading to gray. They are almost illegible, written by the shaky hand of someone hurried or dying.

The Lord of Hollows walked among us

On the other side is another message, in a different but equally unsteady hand:

The dark stone is the Lord of Hollows

Chapter Text

Yorshka wakes thinking she is in her brother’s arms. The heartbeat beneath her cheek only permits her to indulge this gentle dream for a moment. She would know Gwyndolin’s heartbeat anywhere, and this is not it. This one is stronger and somehow more regular. Not unpleasant, but not what Yorshka wants just now.

Still sleepy, she fumbles with the cloak enfolding her until she frees her hands. Then she plucks the hood away from her face and looks up at her guardian. Friede is holding her with the careful looseness of one who does not yet know where the boundary between hurting and holding lies.

Friede’s scythe rests in her right hand, and the shaft lies across Yorshka’s body. Priscilla used to hold Yorshka like that, in the bad times.


It is this detail that brings Yorshka back to full wakefulness. To the flames and the cold and the melting damp and the empty place inside her where her father no longer dwells. When she prods at that spot with her mind, pain punches through her and makes her want to weep. How can she grieve something she never had? Is it the lost potential she mourns, the absence of all the love and memories she might have known? The chance is gone now. To her Dunnel will never be anything more than a silhouette named “Father.”

Yorshka tries to color that silhouette with context. Her father was a warrior and a pyromancer like Dunstan - perhaps he had Dunstan’s warm, rough hands. Perhaps he had Gwyndolin’s measured speech, albeit lower and not quite so soft. How would Yorshka’s name have sounded in his voice?

In the painted world, names are sacred and prophetic, and thus not given until a child begins displaying their defining traits, taking the shape they will bear as an adult. When she fled Ariandel, Yorshka was still too young to have received a name. That honor fell to Gwyndolin. He bestowed upon her the title of a mythical dragon of spring whose breath made the earth flourish. As much as Yorshka loves her name and believes with all her heart that it is right, she will always wonder if her parents would have chosen the same one.

Dunnel never had the chance to speak his daughter’s name. Nor did Priscilla. 

Yorshka’s chest hitches. She clamps her jaw shut before she can begin to sob in earnest.

Friede feels her body spasming all the same. “Oh, child.”

Yorshka has rarely seen a grown adult look so at a loss for what to do. She bites down hard, determined not to unsettle Friede further. “Fear not, please. I-I will be well.”

She does not want to be weak in this place. This is where Priscilla died so Yorshka could live. This is where Dunnel defended his lover’s home even in his madness. This is where Yorshka must make her mother and father proud, fulfill the life they gave to her. That will accomplish more than grief ever could.

She lifts her head to indicate she wants to stand.

“Thou’rt ready?” Friede asks. 

Yorshka hears how uneasily the soft words sit on Friede’s tongue. She also hears the effort Friede is making to thaw herself, and loves her for it. The Unkindled woman is braver than she thinks. She threw herself into battle with a mad pyromancer despite her dread of fire. She is finding softness within herself after a lifetime of cold and cruelty. If she can do that, Yorshka can walk down this bridge and learn what she came here for.

Yorshka nods.

Mother. Father. Lin. Watch me become.

She lifts herself to her feet, leaning on Friede, shaking and swaying a little beneath the freshness of her grief. Friede watches her with eyes narrowed - she does not think Yorshka has recovered enough for this. It’s true, she hasn’t. But if she does not go now, she never will. That must be how Gwyndolin felt when he left Firelink Shrine to face the kiln.

Give me thy courage, dear brother, Yorshka thinks. Then she amends her prayer: Nay, keep thine. Help me hold tight to mine own.

“Walk with me a while?” she says - a question, not a command.

Friede looks at the ground. “I have not the right.”

“Only to the end of the bridge, then?”

Yorshka holds out her arm, more for her own sake than Friede’s. She wants someone to hold her.

Friede’s gaze shifts between her own leathery, burn-scarred palms and Yorshka’s smooth ones. Her face twitches as if the contrast pains her. 

Yorshka nods once more, to encourage her. With eyes still lowered, Friede slings her scythe onto her back and slips her arm through Yorshka’s.

Yorshka looks back only once as they set off down the bridge: up at the cliffs where Friede’s church is built. There stands the greatwolf, a gray dot against a blue-gray sky. Yorshka can feel its eyes on them both, watching, evaluating, waiting to see what they do next. 

She takes a breath.

She imagines the flames at her feet are flowers.

She goes to meet her fate.

~~~

With his lean hollowed body wedged as securely into the crook of two branches as he can manage, Vilhelm considers his position. He is hundreds of feet in the air in a tangle of roots and tree limbs. He has hundreds more feet of sheer cliff still to descend. He is weaker and more exhausted than he has ever been in his life. The bark beneath him is slick with melting snow.

This was an intensely foolish idea.

As if in affirmation, the crow flutters down onto his knee and peers at him with beady, critical eyes. It has been following him. Vilhelm knows it is the same one he encountered in the woods because it always perches on his knee. It has come to him several times since then, though it has not spoken again. Dark be praised for small favors. Vilhelm has enough to occupy his mind without a bird speaking echoes of the past.

He does not try to shake it off him this time. He has learned that it is no use, and he can’t risk any sudden movements in his precarious position. The crow always leaves of its own accord, when it’s finished making its silent censures. 

Vilhelm has greater concerns than a bird that may be a ghost. Now that he has climbed down a little ways, he can make out Priscilla’s ancient tower and the bridge that joins it to the cliff. What he sees does not ease his mind. Scorch marks mar the stones, stark and black and fresh. Too furious to have come from Ariandel’s slow-burning flame. No, there was a fight on that bridge, and Lady Elfriede was in it.

All Vilhelm’s instincts urge him to plunge down through the rest of these roots and make sure his lady is safe. If she is in danger, he should be at her side. Only by a supreme conscious effort does he push the tension out of his limbs, one at a time, and force himself to rest. He’ll be of no use to Lady Elfriede if he falls and shatters his body on the pitiless ice below.

It’s more than his own fragility that restrains him. The crow is not his only observer: the greatwolf is here too, standing on the clifftop not so far above. Vilhelm does not have to look to know the beast is there. He can feel its amber eyes like two coals on the back of his neck. It is not an ordinary animal, he is quite sure. More snow and wind than fur and flesh. Vilhelm often saw it in the distance on his patrols, and it made his skin prickle in warning. It knows things, like the painter. Vilhelm would not be surprised to learn that the girl and the wolf were both part of the conspiracy to burn Ariandel.

He drives those thoughts away with an efficiency born of habit. His hollowing is advanced enough that it would not take much despair to tip him into madness. Vilhelm has walked that line since he joined the Sable Church. Such was the risk he accepted when he became a hollow of Londor. He was unshackling himself, he thought then, and living as a human ought to live. He has never allowed himself to wonder if he was right.

Vilhelm exhales a white cloud, trying not to flinch as the cold air scrapes his imperfectly healed throat. He tells himself all will be well when he finds his lady. Whatever has happened, Elfriede is still here. That means he is still here too. He is her shadow. He goes where she goes.

They will find some reason to fight. They always have.

~~~

Friede stops at the end of the bridge, where an archway opens into the tower. She will go no further no matter how Yorshka tugs at her arm.

“’Tis not for me,” the Unkindled says. “This is not my place.”

Yorshka notes that for once, Friede’s eyes are not darting around the flames at her feet. Her gaze is fixed instead on the round room inside the tower. She must sense something there. Yorshka feels it too, no doubt more clearly than Friede does. It’s a stirring, like a thousand butterflies perched in the center of the chamber. Furling and unfurling their wings, ready to burst into flight at the right touch. Yorshka’s touch.

Yorshka tries not to think about how empty and broken that chamber is now. Everything that made it home is gone. The blankets the corvians made for her and Priscilla, stories woven into the patterns. Priscilla’s scythe glinting in its hooks on the wall. Priscilla herself, with her white furs and horns studding her brow like jewels. It’s all lost now. All that remains are bare stones and flames and puddles of melted snow.

But it is still Yorshka’s place. And there is something here for her.

She hesitates on the threshold, afraid even to touch the stones outlining the arched entrance. This may be the last time she is ever this version of herself: Gwyndolin’s sheltered sister who grows flowers and weeps over beautiful things. Maybe this was inevitable. Yorshka was transforming long before she reached this spot. It began when she first set foot in Ariandel, or perhaps even before then, on the day she learned of her role in Gwyndolin’s poisoning. Yorshka likes that perspective. Her old self isn’t being ripped away with sudden violence. It’s just sloughing off, a dust-dry cocoon that has served its purpose. This will be the first unfolding of her wings.

It’s still frightening, to change. To become.

And it’s too late to turn back. Yorshka knows that from a single glimpse of her reflection in a puddle. Skirts bloodied, eyes solemn and unwavering. The little girl in Sulyvahn’s prison tower is already gone.

She glances at Friede, who is lingering at a respectful distance. “May all good things go with thee, small one,” the Unkindled says.

“Thou wilt stay?”

“Of course.”

Turning back to the tower, Yorshka calls her mother to mind, and her father, and the old corvian who let her sleep in his house, and all the poor folk she cradled in the mire outside their settlement, and the painter girl who called her Priscilla’s heir, and the greatwolf watching from above. So many Yorshka could not save. So many who believed in a new world. So few who will see it.

Step by tiny step, with ghosts trailing after her, Yorshka enters the tower.

I am here. How may I be -

She has reached the center of the room when she catches herself. Gwyndolin would hate to hear her say “be of use.”

What may I do?

Yorshka kneels down and throws open the doors of her mind.

Silence. She senses nothing but the butterfly-stirring of the air against her face, potential about to awaken.

Then her inner vision explodes.

A landscape unscrolls before her, so solid and real that she can no longer see the tower. Barren plains of dark earth beneath a black winter sky. Stars as clear as distant jewels. Sharp outlines of mountains. Clusters of rail-thin evergreens bristling with needles. Voids of deeper black where the land drops away into fathomless lakes. Snow powdering it all, making its own light. A beautiful world in its way, not unlike the Dark world Yorshka knows at home. But it is not gentle as the painter said it would be.

Yorshka takes a step forward. Though her body remains on the tower floor, her spirit is free to wander. Wherever she places her feet, flowers of frost spring from the soil. Some of them melt to reveal true flowers beneath, petals of palest blue and purple that glow like the blooms of Irithyll. Emboldened, Yorshka moves through the brittle grass, first walking and then dancing. Soon a field has blossomed all around her. The flowers reach up to her calves. She twines them into her waistband and her braid.

She sends out her thoughts to the stark evergreens and decks them with crystalline strands of frost. She carpets the mountains in green moss, soft beneath the feet. She does not fear to alter this world. Something tells her that this is right: she is not creating on a whim, but enacting something already fully formed and waiting to be born.

As Yorshka sculpts, wooden houses fade into being, following the curves of the landscape, creeks running clean between them. Strings of little flags hang from their eaves. Their colors and patterns bear histories. Strains of music drift from the doorsteps: not festival songs but quiet melodies to soothe the hurting and ease the weary into sleep.

On one of those doorsteps sits Friede. She is still scarred but no longer cold, and her eyes are full of the starlight above. A smile plays over her lips, as if she has just heard something pleasant. 

From this tender sight, Yorshka turns and steps out onto a nearby lake. The ice melts beneath her feet, and the water becomes a mirror of the stars. She does not sink. She does not feel the cold.

The greatwolf meets her there. Its paws barely ripple the water as it bends for her to put her arms around its neck. Yorshka nestles her brow against the animal’s furry one. Where her head touches the wolf’s, frost flowers blossom and garland them both in light. A silent exchange passes between them. A purpose is given and accepted. Yorshka understands.

The greatwolf’s mantle is hers now. She must become the overseer of the new world. A keeper of the vision. A guardian, just as Priscilla was and more so.

With this understanding, the landscape dissolves. There are no more fields in which to lie down and rest, no more lullabies, no more clear water. Just the tower, hard beneath her knees. Embers licking the edges of her skirts. 

Yorshka comes back to herself with a gasp, as if surfacing from underwater. She aches with yearning for the new world. As real as it was, it’s gone now. All she has left of it is the memory, as real as any physical experience, and the duty to bring it to life. She wants it back! How can she feel so keenly the loss of a place that has yet to come into being?

She pitches forward onto her hands and knees, breaths shuddering through her. Suddenly she is terrified. She has never been entrusted with something as important as this. She knows it won’t be as easy to build the new world as it was in her vision; nothing beautiful ever came without struggle. It’s so much, so big. Too big for someone like her.

Yet…she needs to try. This is the purpose she has been waiting for all her life, her chance to bring true healing to those in need of a haven.

Inch by inch, she draws herself up. Soon she is on her feet, shaking but not falling. She is surprised she can stand with the heavy weight on her shoulders, but it’s a good weight, a happy burden.

Friede meets Yorshka’s eyes. The Unkindled is very still. Her chest is rising and falling as fast as Yorshka’s. 

“What didst thou see, child?”

How to describe it? Visions like Yorshka’s are not meant for words.

She folds her hands like Gwyndolin does when he makes an announcement to his people. “I saw the new world. The painter shall make it, and I shall make it a gentle place.”

Her voice is steady, though she can hear her heart pounding beneath each syllable.

“And thou shalt be with me.”

~~~

They leave the fountain and its ominous messages behind. What else can they do? The ash-filled courtyard cannot say who the Lord of Hollows is or was, or what drove that person to their dire betrayal. The two companions have no choice but to press on.

Still, the discovery shakes Gwyndolin to the core. A heavy silence settles between him and Dunstan as they make their way through the upper levels of the wreckage. Neither one of them wants to say aloud who the “dark stone” might be. There is a simple, unthinkable answer, and they both know it.

Gwyndolin hates himself for entertaining that terrible possibility. Surely it cannot be so. He tries to think who else in Irithyll might defect to the Sable Church at some point in the future, and his mind goes to Amalie. The girl once had dealings with a Londor pilgrim, after all, and accepted the power to steal humanity.

But Amalie was terrified when she made that bargain, just trying to stay human and avoid the evangelists’ pyres. She had no intention of ruling as a dark lord. Besides, she has been Gwyndolin’s fierce and loyal knight since he plucked her from the Undead Settlement, and never once given him cause to doubt her allegiance. Gwyndolin rebukes himself for suspecting her. This place is twisting his thoughts like the buildings. Wrongness presses in on him from all sides.

It’s making him ill, too. Gwyndolin never quite caught his breath after that coughing fit on the hilltop. No doubt Dunstan has heard how his breath sometimes rattles like his lungs are full of water. His chest is heavy. It reminds him of that sickness he contracted while imprisoned in Anor Londo’s damp, drafty cathedral. But it cannot be that. It came on much too fast.

Dunstan knows that too. He keeps glancing over his shoulder to make sure Gwyndolin is still upright.

“We must speak of this, Unkindled,” Gwyndolin says as they walk. He does not need to define what “this” is.

Dunstan does not turn. “Won’t do any good. We don’t know anything yet.”

“‘The dark stone is the Lord of Hollows.’ Thine own name -”

“Don’t say it, Lin. It doesn’t make a bit of sense. It’ll only make us doubt each other, and this ain’t the time or place for that.”

He pauses long enough to reveal his fear.

“‘Dark stone’ might be a title, eh? Sounds like something the Sable Church would use.”

To keep the peace, Gwyndolin says, “’Tis so.”

Eventually they emerge from a warren of narrow passages formed by leaning buildings. Dunstan stops so suddenly that Gwyndolin collides with him, almost pushing the Unkindled off a ledge. Beyond the sheer drop lies another labyrinth where the structures are cluttered even closer together, the passages even darker and narrower. Down there they’ll have no choice but to pass through the buildings. The prospect fills Gwyndolin with inexplicable dread. What further secrets and enemies might await where they can’t even see the sky?

Just for a moment, Gwyndolin lets his head fall onto Dunstan’s shoulder. 

Dunstan has no comfort to offer him. His attention is fixed on the phantom perched on his toes on the very brink of the ledge: a man with a bushy beard and a pointed hood concealing his eyes. The apparition is transparent and colorless, but Gwyndolin knows beyond all reason that his hood is slave-knight red.

Dunstan wastes no time confronting the phantom. “I told you you’d best have answers for me the next time I saw you. You said there would be Fire here, and there ain’t. Instead there’s a fountain from Irithyll with a message about the Lord of Hollows. I suppose that’s who did this.” 

He gestures at the white corona around the eclipsed sun.

“Who stole Fire, Gael? Was it that bastard who sealed Lin’s magic, Friede’s guard dog? We should have let the flies have him!”

The hooded phantom chuckles, mustache wiggling. “Sir Vilhelm? Oh, no, goodness no. He is but a hound of Londor. His being entire is given to his lady. There is no room in him for Fire.”

“It doesn’t work like that. You’re off your head.”

“Nonetheless.”

“Who was it? Are they here? Did you bring us here to stop them?”

“All will soon be made quite clear. You have never forgotten, even if you do not yet remember.”

Exasperated, Dunstan lunges for the phantom. Gael merely flickers aside. Gwyndolin seizes a fistful of his companion’s cloak to keep him from tipping off the ledge.

“Take the plunge,” says the old man, pointing down at the detritus of realms. “You won’t die.”

“You expect me to believe -” Dunstan retorts, but Gael is already gone, dissolved, ash on the wind. All that remains is a scrap of dull red cloth, fluttering from the wall of a small church lying on its side far below. It is tied to the wrought-iron tracery of a stained-glass window, a clear marker.

Dunstan lets out an explosive breath and rakes his hand through his hair. “Nothing for it, I suppose. I’ll go first, break the glass for you. Gael’s wards had best be good.”

Gwyndolin does not move. His breath has caught again and he is trying to free it without wheezing and giving himself away. 

He also cannot look at Dunstan. The words “The dark stone is the Lord of Hollows” keep flashing before his eyes.

Dunstan kneels and takes Gwyndolin by the arms. “Lin? Are you all right?”

Gwyndolin wills the fountain and its warnings out of his mind. He tells himself that Dunstan is still the same dear man who has carried him home and talked with him late into the night on more than one occasion. The Unkindled is right: they have no context for the scrawl on the fountain, and there’s no point letting it drive them apart.

Gwyndolin nods, hoping he looks as brave as Gwynhael.

“Can you breathe?” Dunstan asks.

“Of course.” At that moment, Gwyndolin’s breath whistles in his chest.

“Lin…”

“Go, or I shall push thee.”

With one last skeptical look, Dunstan plants his feet and makes to jump. “Be ready to fight once you’re down there. This feels wrong.”

Then he leaps.

Gwyndolin dares not watch him fall, lest he lose his own nerve. Before he can think about it, he throws himself off the ledge.

Rushing wind fills his ears. Through it he hears a sharp shattering as Dunstan breaks the stained-glass window, and then he too is plunging through it and the air is sweeping up around him, Gael’s ward breaking his fall. He lands in drifted ash and tumbles to the center of the fallen church. He is breathless when he rolls to a stop on his back. His lungs refuse to take air and his chest is heaving with the onset of coughs.


Before he can recover, Dunstan drags him upright and pins him to the wall, what was once the church floor. Gwyndolin’s back strikes hard, dusty marble. Dunstan holds him there as a huge black something streaks past them and out the broken window. It is vaguely human in shape, white around the edges like the eclipse, with glowing white eyes. It shrieks with a thousand furious voices. It leaves behind a trail of icy cold wind that sets Gwyndolin shivering.

“What was that?” Gwyndolin tries to ask. His voice comes out hoarse and his words turn to coughs.

Dunstan points up at the opposite wall, which has now become the ceiling. Mounted to it is an altar stone swarming with black mist. “Deep soul dregs, like we fight at home sometimes?”

Gwyndolin shakes his head, still unable to speak. He takes Dunstan’s hand and writes a word on his palm with his fingertip: Humanity?

Dunstan grimaces. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. That’s what I think too. It’s too dark to be Deep magic.”

As if in response to being named, the mist around the altar solidifies into a dense, roiling cloud. Streamers of it break away and arc towards Gwyndolin and Dunstan, backing them into the wall like a swarm of angry insects. 

With little room to reach for the claymore on his back, Dunstan draws Vilhelm’s onyx sword from his waist. The woven blade bursts into blackflame at his touch.

“Call for help,” he murmurs, dead calm. “We can’t use all our strength so soon.”

Gwyndolin needs no further instruction. 

Dunstan lifts the onyx blade over his head and brings it down straight through the cloud of what Gwyndolin now sees are tiny sprites. That opens a gap just wide enough for Gwyndolin to propel himself through. When he staggers upright on the other side, the breach has already sealed and obscured most of Dunstan. The Unkindled’s pyromancy flashes red and black within the cloud of humanity.

In the precious few seconds he has, Gwyndolin squeezes the ring on his left hand. 

Fly to me, my birds.

He tugs his catalyst from his belt, already blazing blue. “Down, Unkindled!”

Gwyndolin takes aim at the cloud and looses a barrage of crystal shards. The small, enclosed space amplifies the high chiming of his magic. The darts pierce the black mist and the sprites scatter, hissing and buzzing. Dunstan is crouched on one knee. The marble behind him is studded with sharp, glassy shards.

Gwyndolin takes the Unkindled’s arm and pulls him up. Together they run out through the church’s sideways door, ducking and stumbling. Behind them, the cloud has re-formed. They only just have time to throw themselves aside before another huge black ghost howls through the door, raising swirls of powder. 

Amidst the chaos, Sirris and Amalie drop flat to the ground. The soul-wraith passes over their heads and vanishes.

Amalie grins at the black mist in the courtyard as she picks herself up. “We’ve seen this, haven’t we, ma’am?”

Sirris shakes the dust from her silken talisman and looks around with her sharp eyes. “Not quite. This is stronger. No humanity in Lothric Castle manifested this way.”

As she speaks, the mist coalesces into four shadowy figures. They have two arms and two legs as humans do, but they are otherwise diminutive and featureless save for their white eyes. Empty silhouettes of people. In their hands rest the long, thin shapes of catalysts.

They raise their staves and the mist gathers around them, cohering into dark orbs.

Dunstan grins without humor. “Useful lesson I learned as an Undead: always kill the casters first.”

The mages’ dark orbs fly. Then everyone moves at once.

Amalie laughs and tosses a ball of blackflame at the nearest of the orbs, then pulls her twinblades from her belt and rushes at the caster. Swords glowing purple with the miracle Gwyndolin gave her, she sweeps the mage’s head clean off. The rest of its body splashes down over her feet like smoke turned to ink.

Meanwhile, Sirris ducks the orb aimed at her. As she closes with its caster, the ghost’s catalyst morphs into a rippled flamberge. Just for a second, it wears Hodrick’s pointed helm and ragged armor. Sirris turns its blade aside with her estoc. She lets her weight bear the mage to the ground and runs it through.

Beside her, Dunstan rolls away from a poorly aimed thrust of the third caster’s weapon. The ghost cannot turn fast enough to meet him. He impales it from behind with his burning blade.

Something very strange happens to the last mage. When it takes aim at Gwyndolin, its grip on its catalyst suddenly slackens, as if it senses something troubling. Its dark orb falters in midair and falls into the ash at Gwyndolin’s feet.

Gwyndolin sends a comet shard straight through its middle.

Even as this fourth ghost disperses into mist, four more casters cohere from the smoke, then four more, and four more. The courtyard is full of them, all summoning dark magic to their staves. 

Dunstan passes his hand over his sword, and the flames on the blade leap higher. “Going to have to get ‘em all at once, then.”

“Permit me, Unkindled,” Gwyndolin says.

While his companions advance once more into the fray, diverting the ghosts’ attention, Gwyndolin backs away to the far end of the courtyard. He lifts his arm high and back. Blue-green light gathers around his catalyst, brighter and brighter until the slender staff is vibrating in his hand. Battlemage sorcery has never been Gwyndolin’s specialty, but it is the best tool for the task at hand.

When the spell reaches its peak, Gwyndolin’s catalyst jerks like a spring releasing. His whole body snaps forward, and a blue-green orb cannons into the mass of humanity-mages. It explodes on contact with the ground. A blinding turquoise flash swells outward, swallowing the twelve casters and the cloud of sprites from which they drew their forms. Gwyndolin screws his eyes shut. The light behind his closed lids turns red.

When he blinks them open again, the courtyard is empty. No more ghosts, no more mist. His companions are pressed to the ground.

Amalie’s muffled chuckling breaks the ringing silence. She lifts her face from the ash, spitting out powder. “Well done, sir.”

Sirris is more elegant, brushing herself off and coming to Gwyndolin’s side. “Indeed. You scarcely required our assistance.”

Gwyndolin slips his arm through hers. “I would not say that, dear Sirris.”

In truth that last spell left him more winded than it would have done at home. Still, he is satisfied. I have not yet grown weak.

“Stay a while, if you can. I’m sure you’ll get your chance for a real fight if Gael drops us into another trap,” Dunstan says. His face is calm, as it always is after a victory, but his body is taut. He is livid.

Amalie hums thoughtfully and wanders back towards the small church. “Maybe it wasn’t Gael’s trap. What were all those sprites guarding anyway? Something Gael wanted you to find?”

Gwyndolin trails behind her, half curious, half dreading. Please let it not be what I fear.

The girl stoops and picks something out of the churned-up ash. “Something like this. Might’ve fallen from that altar. It looks like you, sir.”

She drops a wooden statuette into Gwyndolin’s hand, no longer than his palm. It’s the sort of token that Gwyn’s faithful once used in their prayers - or placed on small domestic memorials to the dead. It is indeed Gwyndolin’s image, but unlike all his icons in Irithyll, its face isn’t hooded. That means it came from a time after his own. His carved eyes are closed, a peaceful smile on his lips. A flower adorns his hair. His hands are folded beneath long, flowing sleeves. Simplified though the robes are, Gwyndolin recognizes their cut.

By Fire, not more secrets.

Sirris recognizes it too. When she steps up behind him, Gwyndolin feels her go tense.

“You wore that to your first ball, when we conjured Oolacile for you,” she says. “This was carved by someone who knew you well, Master Gwyndolin. Someone who loved you.” 

~~~


Friede is afraid to touch Yorshka in the wake of the vision. The girl has not changed in outward appearance, but there is a blazing new determination in her eyes that renders her almost luminous. As if the flame of Ariandel has come to dwell inside her.

It is only when Yorshka begins to sway that Friede remembers the girl is young and frightened still. Putting aside the questions in her own mind - She is to go to the new world? To fight? To build? - Friede draws Yorshka’s trembling body into her arms and holds her as she never held her sisters. 

She can feel Yorshka’s heart beating together with hers. For the first time she realizes how wondrous it is to cradle another living being. Such affection was discouraged in Londor, looked upon as weakness. Now Friede wonders how she could ever have preached that without question. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe that was part of the reason she burned.

They stand like that for a long time. It’s a while before Friede notices that she too is trembling with awe. She has been given a great, undeserved gift. A chance to find a new home.

She will think about that when Yorshka falls asleep again. She will let it break her apart and show her a new version of herself.

The spell only lifts when, from behind them, someone lands on the bridge with a hard thud. At once Friede is alert, pushing Yorshka behind her, swinging her scythe off her back. At the far end of the bridge, a figure is straightening up with some difficulty. Friede recognizes the scale mantle and quilted tunic as the armor of the wolfsblood followers. She has never seen a soldier of Farron dangle their pointed helm so carelessly from one hand, however. She knows that casual, dangerous air. This is no mindless wanderer of the woods.

Friede keeps her scythe at the ready, blade aligned with her hem. She is still too far away to make out the intruder’s face. “Go no further,” she calls out.

The figure stops. He drops his helm at his feet and raises both hands to show they are empty. Then he speaks two words. Though his voice is ragged and scarcely audible over the crackling flames, Friede knows it at once. Those were the first words she heard upon awakening from her ashes:

“My lady.”

Chapter Text

The labyrinth continues, denser and more claustrophobic all the time. Soon the buildings block out the fireless sky. The dreg heap is a world unto itself, arranged according to its own bizarre rules. The four wanderers never encounter a single dead end. No matter how skewed the landscape, there is always a way forward. Buildings lying on their sides open onto courtyards by means of a broken window. Ash-filled streets join up with fallen towers. There is no gap that cannot be crossed. When they need to drop down from a height, one of Gael’s wards waits below to catch them. The path leads ever onward, to the distant horizon towards which all this ruin bends.

The humanity thickens the deeper they travel. Mists of black sprites swirl up from the stones and floorboards. In certain places it has grown concentrated enough to form huge ghosts and summoners like those they fought in the first church. 

Sometimes the sprites have found vessels. Sirris does battle with a suit of Lothric knight armor that is not as empty as it should be. Humanity boils from the slits in its helmet visor and trails from the flagpole in its hand like a living banner. Elsewhere, Amalie encounters a hulking warrior with wicked curved greatswords and a smoking dark orb where its head should be. Without hesitation, she throws herself from a staircase and drives her twinblades into that dark head. A torrent of sprites scatters from it like black moths taking flight. The armor crumbles beneath her and she leaps laughing to the ground.

Everywhere the humanity is thick enough to pilot suits of armor or form self-sustaining constructs, they find a statuette of Gwyndolin. Sometimes it is on an altar in a church, like the first one. Sometimes it is buried in the drifted ash of what was once someone’s home. Sometimes it is set above the doorway of a barracks, a totem to give long-gone soldiers courage. They are always the same, carved to resemble the rich robes Gwyndolin wore to his first ball in Irithyll.

That night was the happiest of Gwyndolin’s life. Whoever made the carvings wanted to remember him that way, beautiful and whole and smiling.

Dunstan starts to collect them. Before tucking each new statuette into his pouch, he holds it in his palm a while, running his thumb over the grain of the wood. He does not know what he hopes to feel. A memory, perhaps, or a vision. Something to reassure him that what he fears most did not come to pass. That he is not the subject of the warning on the fountain. 

Or perhaps he just wants to give some warmth to these images of his closest companion.

The real Gwyndolin is cold too. He hides it well, sweeping away clouds of humanity and shooting the dark heads off possessed suits of armor. He fights as hard as Dunstan and the two Darkmoon Blades, if not harder. But when the fighting ebbs, Dunstan hears the wheeze in his chest and sees the shivers running through his small body.

Then, just as the ruins are beginning to thin and a wide swath of ash opens before them, Gwyndolin sits down hard on the ground. The motion is so abrupt that it cannot have been his intent. 

Sirris and Amalie are beside him at once. Dunstan kneels down in front of him. “Are your legs worn out?” he asks. It’s the most benign explanation he can think of. He hopes against all reason that he is right, even though he knows in his heart that he isn’t.

Gwyndolin gives a brave nod. “Aye, my legs are frail as ever, ’tis all.”

As he says this, he curls up his fingers and rubs them together, as if trying to press warmth into them. It is cold in the ruins, but no more so than in Irithyll - not enough to bother him like this.

Dunstan takes his hands to pull him up. He feels a chill seeping through Gwyndolin’s fine gloves.


Swallowing the myriad concerns that leap to his tongue, he steadies his voice. “We should find you somewhere to rest. You’re pushing yourself too hard and this place isn’t good for you.”

He scans the desolate plain of ash and the bare, twisted trees. Beyond lies nothing but open air: they are on a precipice. It makes Dunstan uneasy. It’s too open. The passages they are leaving behind are no safer, with humanity seeping from the walls at every turn, but what choice do they have? They cannot linger here where enemies might come from any direction.

Dunstan slips an arm through Gwyndolin’s and turns him back towards the warren of fallen buildings. “Go on. There’s a hallway not far behind that ought to be clear. Sit there a while and get your strength back. We’ll watch.”

Gwyndolin has just opened his mouth to protest when a terrible cold wind cuts through their clothes. Gwyndolin leans into Dunstan, shuddering. Then a huge dark creature lifts into the air above the precipice, the Darksign eclipse hanging behind it like a profane halo. It is not like any of the humanity constructs they have seen thus far. This one is much bigger. And it has wings.

Dunstan has no time to register more than this. Beams of purple-black magic are hailing down, slitting the air, imprinting themselves on Dunstan’s vision, and he is running, kicking up sprays of ash and pulling Gwyndolin behind him.

~~~

“I thought thee dead by now.” 

It’s the first thing that comes to Friede’s mind, inelegant with relief that surprises her. Never has the sight of a withered hollow face gladdened her so.

“As did I, my lady.” 

Vilhelm’s voice is even rougher and lower than usual, as though it pains him to speak, but it’s his. It’s a voice Friede knows and trusts. Before she realizes what she is doing, she has reached out and taken his arms in her hands.

Vilhelm’s sunken eyes flicker down to Friede’s fingers: an unspoken question. The people of the Sable Church do not touch one another with gentleness. They do nothing gentle at all.

“You are unharmed?” he asks.

Friede knows this is not the question Vilhelm wants to ask, but he is too disciplined to say what he is really thinking. “Aye, unharmed. I did battle with a dark spirit not long ago, a mad pyromancer, yet he touched me not.”

“And what of the Darkmoon and his Unkindled?”

“The ashen one conducted me to Irithyll upon my defeat. I lingered there a while.”

Vilhelm’s eyes narrow. Still so protective of her. “You were imprisoned?”

“Not truly, though they trusted me little. They were good to me. I wounded their Lady Yorshka, and for that they might have inflicted any punishment upon me, yet they asked only that I assist them in gathering and preparing food. Mushrooms, in particular.”

“They made a servant of you?”

“Nay, they asked no task of me that they did not themselves perform. A knight of Catarina with a great love of cooking sought to instruct me in his art. He was ever so patient with me. I did not return his fellowship as freely as I ought.”

As absurd as all this sounds to Friede’s own ears, she knows it sounds even stranger to Vilhelm. Accustomed to violence and cruelty as he is, it must be inconceivable to him that Friede’s keepers showed her warmth. For a long moment he looks her up and down, searching for signs of harm that are not there, confusion written in every small movement. He seems to be weighing what he can say without overstepping his bounds.

Finally he shifts his weight, exhales, looks down at the stones. “My lady…you are not yourself.”

He is certain they tortured me, Friede realizes. Broke me.

“Nay, I am not,” she says, a little breathless. And what a terrifying, liberating prospect it is!

Her answer does nothing to put Vilhelm at ease. He looks past her to where Yorshka stands, wary but unmoving. A note of urgency creeps into his ragged voice. “May I know your business with the crossbreed girl?”

Friede has known Vilhelm long enough to detect an undercurrent of desperation. He wants her to make sense of all this strangeness and disaster, to give him some order he can follow. She can do neither. She hardly knows what is happening herself.

“‘Crossbreed’ is a discourteous word,” she says.

Vilhelm scoffs. “I was not aware I owed the girl courtesy.”

“She pled mercy for me when I fell in battle. Now I am her protector. I stand here by her grace, and thou also.”

“I, my lady?”

“’Twas she who healed thee.”

And she did a remarkable job of it, Friede thinks, assessing the four thin scars on Vilhelm’s throat. The new skin is pink against his leathery, hollowed flesh. Yorshka should not have been able to close mortal wounds so completely in this rotting place that denies healing. Even in the outside world, the most skilled miracle-worker could not have treated those cuts without a mundane surgeon’s aid. What Yorshka has done is impossible. Some outside force must be augmenting her gifts. The greatwolf? Ariandel itself? Is this place bequeathing Priscilla’s heir all the power in its dying breath, giving her strength to do what she must? Whatever it is, it will likely be fleeting. But for these moments, it is miraculous in every sense.

Vilhelm is less impressed. His voice turns from bewildered to disdainful - his most automatic defense. “Then she is a fool.”

“Perhaps. I thought so once. Now I am not so certain. Nevertheless, she saved thee, though she had little cause to do so.”

“She may keep her pity. I have no use for it.”

“Sir.”

All the sarcasm drains from Vilhelm’s demeanor at that word, that signal that Friede is quite serious. He goes as still as if Friede had struck him. “You mean to say I am indebted to the girl.”

“And I likewise.”

Vilhelm huffs a breath, a laugh without mirth. “How clever of her.”

“There is no scheme at work. Lady Yorshka’s concern is sincere. She simply cannot abide suffering.”

“As I say, she is a fool.”

At that, whatever strength brought Vilhelm all the way down from Friede’s church leaves him at once. He sinks down on the wall of the bridge with a muttered, “Forgive my weakness, my lady.”

“Peace. Rest a while.”

“I have rested too long.”

“Not so, ’tis plain.”

Friede considers what a trial it must have been, before and after Yorshka’s intervention, for Vilhelm to claw his way back from the edge of death - and return to Friede’s side. That’s what stings her the most: he came straight back to her. As ever, his faith in her is misplaced. He must have believed she would know what to do next. Instead he has found that she is becoming someone he does not recognize. Now, exhausted, he can only stare at Ariandel’s flames and know that nothing can stop them.

Friede sits down beside her knight, who makes a valiant attempt to snap to attention. Fatigue keeps his shoulders bowed.

“I sought to spare thee,” Friede says. There is an unfamiliar ache deep within her.

“I have not forgotten.”

“I released thee when I gave thee thine onyx sword. Thou wouldst not go.”

“I did not wish to go.”

Hollow faces do not convey much emotion, but Friede hears the raw edge in Vilhelm’s voice. Echoes of the stubborn, angry boy who came to her gates looking for someone to shape his hurt into a weapon.

“And see where I brought thee,” she says quietly. “To drown in thy blood amongst the flies, unable to die.”

“I lost a duel. The failure was mine.”

“Had we not sequestered Ariandel’s flame, thy death would have been swift and clean. Why dost thou return to me, having suffered so in my name?”

“I swore an oath.”

“I held it fulfilled long ago.”

“I keep it still.”

Vilhelm says this in a softer tone Friede has not heard since he gave her his fealty all those years ago. She does not ask why he has kept his vow for so long; she has tried that before and gotten nowhere. She has never been able to make sense of it. Vilhelm knew of Friede’s failure to usurp the First Flame - he saw her burn. He knew what she intended to do in Ariandel, knew the ruin it would bring one way or another. Yet still he followed her, the Sable Church’s disgraced founder.

“What will you do?” he asks her now, still soft. One last fading hope that she will make sense of this. 

And Friede cannot give it to him. She is still reeling from the answer herself. The words feel unreal on her tongue even as she speaks them:


“The little painter will make a new world. Lady Yorshka will watch over it. She saw this in a vision...and saw me beside her. I may well choose to follow her into the new creation.”

“Then we are undone.”

“That may yet be to the good.”

Vilhelm exhales long and low. He does not speak for a time; he is not the sort of man who shares his thoughts.

“There may be maggots in me,” he says at last. Though his tone is controlled, he cannot quite conceal the tremor in his breathing. Friede hears something break inside him.

She closes her eyes. Blackflame leaps up within her, hot with guilt and fury. She has to clench her fist to keep it from manifesting.

Vile things. ’Tis well I left them all dead.

Then suddenly, Yorshka is beside them both. “If there were, sir, I think ‘twould not be in doubt - thou wouldst know it. Nothing unwelcome lieth within thee, I daresay.”

Vilhelm’s mouth twitches with something that is neither malice nor scorn. “May it be so.”

“Still holding to thine healer’s oath, I see. Is there no end to thy goodwill?” Friede asks the dragon girl, shaking her head.

“I should hope not.” Yorshka is smiling, but her eyes are gravely serious.

Aye, thou’rt a fool. Perhaps we could all do with a bit of thy foolishness.

~~~

Sirris has not run like this since she fled Sulyvahn's coup. Feet pounding, blood roaring in her ears, throat on fire, expecting any second to feel one of those dark bolts slice into her. She dares not glance back at the creature firing at them. She is terrified.

And yet, it isn’t the same sort of terror that drove her from Irithyll. This time she isn’t alone. Dunstan and Gwyndolin are in front of her, Amalie behind her, whooping and laughing every time a bolt slams down nearby. This is the sort of terror that bends back into exhilaration, that walks the line between screaming and laughing. For the first time Sirris understands why Amalie finds such a thrill in battle. She has never felt more alive than she does now, running for her life with her captain and her comrades.

The clifftop is dotted with the ramshackle wooden frames of houses. They look like they should have collapsed ages ago, but they are the only nearby shelter. As the next burst of violet rain manifests above, Dunstan dives into one of them and drags Gwyndolin with him. 

“They’ve the right idea, ma’am!” Amalie grabs Sirris’s hand, and together they tumble through the same empty doorway just as the magical storm reaches them. Outside, dark sorcery hammers the roof and ground and tosses up clouds of ash.

Breathless and a little dazed, Sirris does not move for a moment. She lets herself lean on Amalie. She loves the feeling of their heartbeats pounding through their clasped hands. 

Inches away in the cramped space, Gwyndolin is huddled against Dunstan. The god is coughing and gasping for breath but trying to smile. “Shall I…shall I return fire?”

Dunstan catches Sirris’s eye. She is well enough acquainted with him to see the worry in his face. He does not know what to do for Gwyndolin. “I’m not sure we should stay here long enough to fight that thing. If one of those bolts hits -”

The roof collapses with a great splintering. Shards of wood and beams of icy magic shower them all. They scramble backwards into the corners, then out through the empty frame walls. The magic chills Sirris’s exposed skin. She knows with a visceral certainty that it could kill her effortlessly.

They flee again, skidding across the plain with their breath rasping at the air. They throw themselves into the next shack and cluster together. Their knees knock into each other and their breath mingles, stirring strands of sweat-dampened hair. Above them, magic drills into the weathered boards that are their only shield.

Sirris cannot say what makes her do what she does next. Maybe the fear and adrenaline are affecting her. Maybe she has absorbed a bit of Amalie’s boldness. Whatever the case, she starts to speak into the close, stale air and cannot stop.

“I know I’ve chosen a poor time to tell you this, sir -”

Gwyndolin laughs between wheezing breaths.

“ - but should I die here, I wish you to know the reason you did not find me in Irithyll when you returned from your convalescence in the Lands Between. I fled Sulyvahn’s coup, you see. I did not return. I left my comrades to be captured and killed. It was a cowardly thing to do. I was unworthy of you and the love I had borne you since my childhood.”

The wooden frame shakes beneath a deafening new rain of magic, but Gwyndolin does not move. He is looking at Sirris steadily, and so is Amalie. Her sharp green eyes say, Don’t stop there. Tell him the important part.

Sirris quickens her speech, for her own sake as much as in response to the threat outside. If she hesitates now, she’ll lose her nerve.

“I loved an illusion. It was the Dark Sun on whom I set my heart. I later learned that was not your true self and did not bring you happiness. Still I did not wish you to be Lin, though Lin is who you wish to be. For all this I am sorry, my lord. I will see you as you are, and I will serve you with all the courage I could not find when you most needed me.”

Gwyndolin reaches for her hand, eyes full of compassion. “Oh, dear Sirris. Be not unduly harsh with thyself. Thou wert -” Dust sifts ominously down from the roof. The plain outside is silent, the calm before the storm. “Nay, there is no time. I shall tell thee later.”

A change comes over him then. His shoulders straighten and his eyes light up, the look of someone who has just solved a riddle.

“I have a thought. ’Tis the sort of thing Eira might do.”

Dunstan grimaces. “That ain’t reassuring.”

“If I am right, I shall save us all. If I am wrong, I shall die.”

“Then you’re not doing it.”

“I am.”

With that Gwyndolin ducks out of the hut, shaking off Dunstan’s hands and ignoring his hissed, “Lin!”

Alarmed, Sirris moves to go after him, but Amalie holds her back. “Trust him, ma’am. He knows what he’s doing.”

Heart in her mouth, Sirris watches Gwyndolin step out in full view of the humanity-creature suspended in the sky. It reminds her of the pilgrim butterflies that descended on Lothric Castle before the end. It has a similar shape, but it holds none of the same horror. Its wings are graceful, beating softly at the air. Its insectile body is delicate. Behind its head rests a crown with the same sun-rays as Gwyndolin’s.

Gwyndolin stands before this creature with arms outspread. He is so small and vulnerable. The butterfly’s bolts manifest around him. Beams of darkness angle towards him, poised to shred his body - and then they freeze. All the dreadful power goes out of them. They hang in the air, harmless as water.

He speaks in a clear, gentle voice. “In my name - in Lin’s name - let us pass.”

He glances over his shoulder at his companions and mouths, Go.

They do not question him. As one, they clamber upright and out of the shack and run to the cliff’s edge in the precious moments Gwyndolin has given them. Behind them the butterfly construct makes a low, rhythmic sound that might be sobbing.

Before she leaps into empty air, Sirris glances over the precipice. Far below, past the tangled roots clinging to the cliff, is a greenish swamp littered with remnants of domed towers and arcaded walls. She knows those structures. She made illusions of them for that first ball. She conjured them unbroken and radiant.

All at once, she knows why such a large, aggressive construct is here.

It is guarding the remains of Oolacile.

~~~

Yorshka does not need to hear the greatwolf’s howl or see it leap off the cliffs to sense it coming. She knows the beast is there even before it materializes out of the wind, huge and shaggy and suddenly solid. Vilhelm and Friede both leap to their feet, Vilhelm reaching for the saber at his waist. Yorshka does not so much as flinch. She lifts one hand as she has seen Gwyndolin do to ask an audience for stillness. Then she walks down the bridge and puts her arms around the greatwolf’s neck, just like in her vision.

Once more a silent understanding passes between them: Yorshka is to get on the greatwolf’s back. There is one last thing she must do at the base of this tower, and there is no way down but to jump.

Bear my companions also, she asks. They are not kind, but I cannot leave them lost. Please.

The greatwolf takes Yorshka first, dropping nimbly down to the frozen lake in a swirl of wind. When it lands, it scatters the pale flowers growing at the tower’s base. Then, with a reluctant growl in its throat, it returns for Friede and her knight. Yorshka thinks they both look quite natural mounted on wolf-back. They are much like wolves themselves, Vilhelm especially (he frightens Yorshka a little). Perhaps they would make good ash-worm fighters, if they were permitted to join Irithyll’s hunts.

Vilhelm’s knees almost buckle as he slips from the greatwolf’s back, but Yorshka does not offer him further healing. She knows he will spurn her. She recognizes the brittle rawness in him. Dunstan looked the same way when he sat at Yorshka’s bedside after the battle with Friede. Warriors accustomed to ruling by their iron fists do not like to feel the world slip from their control. It scares them as little else can, and that makes them angry.

Vilhelm keeps his eyes fixed on Friede as they cross the lake, as if he fears everything will dissolve if he looks anywhere else. Friede, in turn, keeps her eyes on Yorshka. Rarely has anyone so strong looked to Yorshka for guidance. She dares not say that she does not know what she is doing. Ever since returning to Ariandel, she has not felt the need to know. Something greater than knowing - a desire to become - is leading her by a thread attached to her heart. It is so strong that it shields her from thought and fear. What will become of her when that guiding need is gone and the weight on her shoulders all comes down? What will she do when she is left alone to confront the enormity of her fate?

She is the guardian of the new world. She is the guardian of the new world.

So they walk: three wanderers, one lost, one found, and one wishing to be found, led by a fourth who knows more than all of them. The greatwolf is the only one among them whose footfalls are sure.

The lake is beautiful, the ice still thick enough to walk upon despite the flames. Frost fangs drip and gleam in the firelight. Walls of ice crystal weep. Everything is blue and wet and glassy, blurred mirrors all around. Yorshka remembers how she felt when she first came here with Gwyndolin and Dunstan: how she did not want to look at the tower because even then it called to her, beckoning her to change. Now the change is made and a new Yorshka is taking shape. She is both afraid and eager to shed her skin and become that new self, even as she mourns the one that is dying.

Her companions are whispering behind her, about her, themselves, Ariandel -

“Surely you cannot mean to follow her. We swore there would be no new world and no flame to burn the old. The flame is ruin.” 

“Thou believ’st that still, after thine ordeal in the pit?”

- but it doesn’t matter. Yorshka walks the path of transformation, and she will walk it to the end.

A crow flaps overhead, passing very close to Vilhelm’s head. He just manages to stop himself from ducking. Yorshka catches fragments of a voice: a young girl’s, not a bird’s.

…should have…that song…masters were out…don’t blame…should have…

Crows are messengers of the dead. This is known in the painted world. Corvian storytellers hear them clearer than most.

~~~

Dunstan should have fallen off those roots when Gwyndolin dropped into his arms. But he did not. He caught Gwyndolin, who was not shredded by unholy magic, and did not let him go.

That proved to be a wise decision, born of fear though it was. At the base of the roots lay a swamp green with poison. The last thing Gwyndolin needed was to walk through that. He fussed about being carried on Dunstan’s back, as he always does, but he fell silent when he recognized the ruins. After that he put his head down and wept softly for a while.

Gwyndolin loved Oolacile, Dunstan knows. It was where he learned illusion magic in his youth, and it was the first place he felt he could be himself. He lost it once when it fell to the Abyss. Now, seeing its last remnants washed up here at the end of time, that wound has reopened. All that remains of his haven are tortured trees and crumbling gazebos, where once there were rich forests full of light, beauty, and magic.

Gwyndolin never looks at it. Not once does he lift his head from Dunstan’s shoulder.

Sirris and Amalie prowl the ruins, looking for more Dark-headed knights to plunge down on. Gwyndolin and Dunstan are left to cross the swamp and seek shelter. It isn’t very large, and its poison is the slow, draining kind that makes Dunstan feel feverish. It might be worse. Still, he is soon unsteady and staggering through the green slime clinging to his boots. He’ll fall on his knees if he isn’t careful.

“I feel thee shivering, Unkindled,” comes Gwyndolin’s muffled voice. “I can walk a while.”

“Through this? Not a chance. It’ll kill you.”

Dunstan cannot bear the thought of Gwyndolin growing sicker than he already is. He wants the god close to him - perhaps more than usual because of what was written on that fountain. If Dunstan cares for Gwyndolin as much as he possibly can now, will it avert that unthinkable future?

I don’t want to be Lord of Hollows. I don’t want to hurt him. Why would I hurt him?

“At least I have company this time,” he offers, trying for levity and failing. “In the Farron swamp, there was no one about but the ghru.”

“What is a ghru?”

“You never had the misfortune of meeting one? They’re a bit like the Omen bairns, but bigger, more or less as tall as a man. If I weren’t careful they’d jump on me and try to eat my face.”

When Gwyndolin says nothing to this, Dunstan knows he can avoid the issue at hand no longer.

“Lin, that thing on the cliff looked like the moonlight butterfly, didn’t it?”

“An image of it, perhaps, spun from darkness.”

“And it knew you.”

“My father’s courtiers called me that, knowest thou? Moonlight butterfly. The creature in the Darkroot Garden acquired the same title. I never discerned how.”

“This one knew you, and it was guarding Oolacile, a place you loved.”

“A summoner in the first church we entered knew me also, I believe. Its magic faltered when it turned on me.”

“Those first casters were guarding a carving of you. So were all the strongest swarms of humanity we’ve fought.”

It doesn’t make sense. If these Dark constructs are the work of the Lord of Hollows, or at least the consequences of that person’s betrayal, why are they protecting objects and places associated with Gwyndolin? Why would a dark lord care to preserve the memory of a god?

Unless, of course, the dark stone really was the Lord of Hollows, and the dark stone is -

Dunstan staggers to a halt and leans on a bit of wall half sunken in the muck.

Gwyndolin must have the same suspicion, because his arms and legs tighten around Dunstan. “I will not believe it,” he says into Dunstan’s shoulder. “Thou’rt so very good to me. This I know. This I shall always know.”

Dunstan thinks of the statuettes clacking in his pouch, how peaceful and happy they look. What are they? Simple memorials made by someone who loved Gwyndolin dearly? Expressions of a traitor’s regret? Dunstan does not want to consider either alternative. They both point to sorrow on the horizon.

He grits his teeth against his feverish shivers and the reek of rotting vegetation and the possibilities haunting his mind. “Nothing is going to happen to you, Lin. I won’t let it.”

Gwyndolin makes a small, choked sound. “’Tis always so simple to thee. In the kiln itself didst thou tell me I had only to decide whether to live or die.”

Dunstan squints through the gloom to the other side of the swamp: there are shallow caves in the rock there. That’s where they need to go. They need to rest and eat some purple moss clumps. The sooner they’re out of this graveyard, the better they’ll feel. There was something wrong with that dreg heap, and it filled their heads with wrongness, that’s all. If they can only think clearly, everything will be all right.

He straightens up and hefts Gwyndolin higher on his back. “Some things are that simple.”

~~~

The greatwolf leads them to an unassuming corner of the lake, tucked away where the cliffs form a sheltering niche. Yorshka sees a thinner patch of ice here. It is almost perfectly round and the water laps visibly at its underside. The greatwolf places a paw on it and it cracks, shattering away in a spiderweb. The air hums as a magical ward dissolves.

With a tilt of its head, the animal beckons Yorshka forward. Dread shivers through her, but still the thread of her determination tugs her to the edge of the pool. The water is so clear that she can see to the bottom. There, sealed away secret and safe, lies a scythe. The wooden shaft and slender claw-shaped blade are stamped on Yorshka’s memory. This was her mother’s weapon.

Yorshka draws a sharp breath. She knows what she must do even before the greatwolf’s instruction enters her mind. Priscilla’s lifehunt scythe is true death to any living thing, even a god. Even a painted world. When it cuts Ariandel’s last rotting threads, the flames will catch in full and this creation will die.

Silently the greatwolf conveys that retrieving the scythe will not be easy. The death in its blade has seeped into the water. It would kill an ordinary human. It will hurt Yorshka too. Her dragon blood alone will give her the strength to endure, and she won’t have much time.

Behind her, Vilhelm and Friede have a hushed, intense dispute. It doesn’t last long. Friede says, “Stand in her way at thy peril. Thou wilt answer to me,” and that is the end of it.

Yorshka hears herself speaking to them as if from a distance, relaying what the greatwolf told her. She is already letting Friede’s cloak fall from her shoulders so it doesn’t weigh her down. Pulling off her boots, stained brown with the blood of the catacombs. Going numb and stepping outside herself. Is this how Elisabeth felt when she closed her hands upon the First Flame?

Vilhelm crouches at the edge of the hole in the ice and dips his hand in the water. At once he jerks it back with a hiss. His hollow face fixes on Yorshka, half mocking, half incredulous. “You must be mad. Can you swim, girl?”

“A little… Not much, really,” Yorshka admits. All the waters she has ever known are too cold for swimming. Eira had just begun to teach her in the more temperate pools of the Altus Plateau. 

Friede wraps her hand hard around Yorshka’s wrist, heartbeat pulsing through her fingers. Her face betrays unguarded concern. “Be not hasty. Treat not thy life so lightly.”

Yorshka does not answer. She knows beyond explanation that all will be well. She is the guardian of the new world.

She steps into the pool, barefoot, with nothing but her dress between her and the water. At once needles of pain, tiny and piercing, assail her feet. It makes her gasp more than the shocking cold, which has never troubled her. 

“Make use of thy tail,” Friede says, almost a plea. “Breathe while thou canst.”

This time Yorshka does not look back at her. All her focus is on her shuddering breaths and the pebbly lake bottom sloping gently down beneath her feet. It isn’t so very deep in this corner; she won’t have to swim down too far.

A few more steps and the pain crawls up through her skirts, stinging her ankles and calves. Her breathing starts to hitch and she feels the first true surge of fear. How did Eira show her to move her arms and legs through the water? Those days seem very far away.

She has little chance to remember. She has waded in up to her waist. The lake bottom is dropping away from her and her lower half is all biting cold fire. She can’t draw a full breath. She will not be able to stand here for long.

Yorshka looks into the greatwolf’s penetrating amber eyes. She thinks of the beautiful vision they shared on the tower. The urge to cry diminishes.

I am the guardian of the new world. 

Let that be her incantation. She will speak it into being.

Heart racing, she takes one more stilted breath and submerges her whole body.

Icy pain hits her like a kick in the gut and forces her breath from her lungs. Bubbles of precious air stream out into the water. Yorshka can see the scythe, though, no more than twelve feet down. 

I am the guardian of the new world.

For a terrifying moment she flails helplessly at the water, losing more breath each second. Then somehow she turns herself downward and instinct overtakes her and her tail begins to swish like a fish’s. She pushes the water past her with her arms and legs and tail, pushes the pain past her with her mind. She has known pain before. This is no worse than sitting imprisoned in her church steeple wondering where Gwyndolin had gone.

Stroke after stroke, tail sweeping back and forth, she propels herself down. Her body is burning inside and out now. Her chest spasms with the need for air.

I am the guardian of the new world.

She hurts so much. The hurt is becoming part of her. Swarms of embers or spines of frost assault her on all sides, fire or ice, there is no difference, it all burns.

Her body grows heavier with each passing moment.

As black spots burst across her vision, her mother’s face fills her mind.

One more push and her hand closes around the scythe’s wooden shaft. She sees it but cannot feel it through the cold burning.

Yorshka turns and kicks off the lake bottom. Up, towards the pale blue light above her, fire in all her nerves, her mother’s weapon dragging at her arm.

I shall not die.

Chapter Text

Vilhelm does not exactly hope Yorshka will drown. It would simplify matters, however. She reminds him of things he does not want to think about.

He is standing here because of her healing, for instance.

And when he lay in the catacombs, he tugged open his collar and let the flame’s embers fall upon his slit throat. He welcomed them. For a moment he wished to burn, if only to be released from the flies and the wounds that would not heal.

Of course, the girl does not make things so easy. She has not been submerged for long when she bursts back through the water’s surface, gasping and spluttering. Her right hand is clenched around the lifehunt scythe. She grabs for the edge of the hole in the ice but falls short, awkward with the weight of the weapon. Her head slips back beneath the water.

Friede lunges forward. Vilhelm throws out an arm to hold her back: he felt the death in that water with his own hand. Friede could easily break his grip, weak as he is, but she does not try. Perhaps she has accepted that Yorshka must live or die on her own merits. Isn’t that the usual rule for this sort of trial?

The girl does not need help. The next time she breaks the surface, she flings her upper body onto the ice. Legs kicking and tail swishing, she wriggles the rest of the way out. Friede does break loose then, and Yorshka collapses in her lap, coughing or sobbing or both. The greatwolf bends to nuzzle the girl’s face.

Yorshka does not remain prone for long. With obvious exertion, she plants the scythe on the ice and pushes herself to her feet. Standing there, she does not look like a silly little girl. She looks, Vilhelm thinks, much as he must have when he fought his way out of the fly pit. Shaking, dripping, chest heaving, wracked with pain. White and near collapse but alive. And so fierce.

She has more spirit than I credited to her. I grant her that.

As if to crown the girl, the crow swings down out of the sky and perches on her shoulder. Yorshka tilts her head toward it, listening. Her eyes slide out of focus for a moment. Then she takes a shuddering breath and looks right at Vilhelm.

“Thou hast a ghost, sir.”

Vilhelm laughs, though he is unnerved. “No doubt I have many.”

“She is called Roslein.”

The name slips past his defenses. Something inside him splinters. And all he can do is hold

very

still.

~~~

Gwyndolin wakes to a weight on his chest. His midsection spasms and forces air into his lungs. His heart pounds, two hard arrhythmic beats, before regaining its steady course. The brief episode leaves his face bathed in cold sweat. He lies still for a moment, trying to breathe. If he is very calm and quiet, perhaps he can convince Dunstan that nothing is amiss.

Small chance of that. Dunstan is already beside Gwyndolin, a hand on his shoulder. “Have you had any sleep?”

Gwyndolin nods and sits up. His body is heavy and the chill inside him has not receded much despite Dunstan’s cloak laid atop his own. Dunstan offers him water from a skin and he takes a few delicate swallows that stick in his tight, dry throat. All the while Gwyndolin keeps his gaze averted from the swamp outside the cave. If he looks at what remains of Oolacile, he will disintegrate.

“Are you feeling any better?” Dunstan asks. From the look in his dark eyes, he already knows the answer and won’t be fooled by any lies.

Gwyndolin gives him a faint smile all the same. “A bit.”

He does not want to think or speak about what may be happening to his body. Instead he looks at Sirris and Amalie, who are sitting across the small hollow from him. Their hands rest very close to each other on the ground. Amalie is wearing a long burgundy hood edged with golden embroidery. She has set it back on her head, baring much of her thick red-brown hair.

Gwyndolin raises an eyebrow at her. “That is not our usual uniform.”

Amalie grins. “I won it in a duel with a lady pyromancer not too far from here.”

Sirris rolls her eyes without rancor. “Pardon her, captain. She is reckless and impossible.”

“And yet I see she is dear to thee, and thou to her.”

At once a flush rises in Sirris’s cheeks. “I -”

“I must say, ’tis more than I dared hope for when I sent you to Lothric Castle in each other’s company.”

Sirris looks at the dusty cave floor, then up through her lashes at Amalie. “I could love her, I think.”

Amalie’s eyes widen and a bright smile splits her freckled face. If not for the cave’s close confines, Gwyndolin knows she would already have flung her arms around Sirris. “Ma’am!”

Despite his weariness, warmth steals through Gwyndolin and he smiles too. He has learned that there are always candles in the dark, and they must be held close. Budding love in this ruined, dying world - there is fierce defiance in that. Gwyndolin rejoices in it.

“I promise you, sir, this will not interfere with my duties. I will ensure it does not distract my junior either,” Sirris says, formal once again.

“Sirris, dear Sirris.” Gwyndolin takes her hand, hoping she cannot feel his chilled skin through his gloves. “Thou’rt named for thin, high clouds made of ice crystal, knowest thou? They are beautiful but remote and cold. I knew even in thy girlhood that this name suited thee. Thou wert ever so serious and too often alone. I saw much of myself in thee, and not to the good. I worried for thee as I watched thee grow and give thine heart to me, for I could not return thine affection in like manner.”

Sirris bows her head, cheeks reddening again.

Gwyndolin pats her hand. “Aye, I knew of thy feelings. I am glad to see thee open thine heart to one who can give thee what thou seek’st and so richly deserv’st. I have wished thee joy since first I saw thee.”

Sirris’s eyes are glistening. Gwyndolin knows he has hurt her by confirming her suspicions, but it had to be done. Amalie takes her other hand and Sirris looks her in the face for the first time.

“She saw what I did not wish to see, and she made me see it too,” Sirris says. “I was in love with a story and an idol, not the person you are, sir.”

Amalie traces her thumb over Sirris’s knuckles. “I suppose I could have been a bit kinder about it.”

“I will be honored to know you as Lin now that I am no longer caught up in an illusion. May we…may we be better friends for it.”

“I should like that very much,” Gwyndolin says. He has rarely been more sincere.

“Oh, ma’am.” Amalie pulls Sirris’s head onto her shoulder and softly kisses her hair. She murmurs something Gwyndolin cannot make it out. It sounds like I’m proud of you. “You’ll be all right now. It’ll be better when we go home, you’ll see. We can all start again.”

Dunstan squeezes Gwyndolin’s shoulder, as if to impress that phrase on his body: When we go home. Gwyndolin repeats it in his mind. 

When we go home.

When we go home.

When.

If he thinks it enough, perhaps it will come true.

~~~

The girl cannot have known that name. He has not spoken it aloud since he was a boy, not even to himself. He locked it away with the rest of his life before the Sable Church.

So the crow is indeed a ghost. Carrying a ghost, at least.

In the woods the bird landed on his knee. You all right, love? it asked, in the lowborn accent that was once his own.

He should have known.

Too much, too much all at once. For the first time in ages he fears his own hollowing.

~~~

They climb out of the swamp on ancient tree limbs clinging to the cliffs. Dunstan carries Gwyndolin on his back and Gwyndolin does not protest. He is too relieved to leave the swamp behind.

Not far from where they emerge lies a fallen wall made of rough-hewn stone. Time has worn it away to a narrow point jutting over a gaping hole in the earth. The walls of the pit are sheer, as if scraped away by tremendous hands bent on exposing the earth’s private interior. There is a certain obscenity about it. No one can tell how deep it goes. If it plunged down to the world’s core, that would only be fitting. This is a place of descents.

Gael’s phantom waits at the very tip of the broken wall, pointing down into the hole.

“You won’t die.”

The phantom chuckles at some secret known only to him. 

Dunstan grabs for him - “What does that mean?” - but as before, Gael flickers out of reach.

They can do nothing but follow his direction.

Down they plunge through cold, earthy air. The pit walls blur past them, faster and faster until they land in shallow water. Before them is a large cavern dotted with bits of broken wall, older and rougher than anything they saw above. Beneath their feet is a cobblestone depression, perfectly round. In its very center is a pile of ash.

Dunstan knows it. He knows it even before he sees the archway where Frampt once held court and the terraced steps leading up to it. His body and soul know this shallow pit. How many times did he return here to touch the bonfire?

“Lin. It’s Firelink Shrine,” he says, voice small in the stillness. “The old Firelink Shrine. From Lordran.”

“Lordran.” Gwyndolin echoes the ancient name, a breath from another time.

But Frampt is long gone now. Instead, two hulking shapes are crouched amongst the ruins. And one is beginning to glow with flame.

~~~

Friede carries Yorshka to a cavity in the rock where she can rest. The girl is shivering, half-conscious, and whimpering with receding pain. After removing her wet things, Friede nestles Yorshka in her cloak. The greatwolf curls around her and begins to lick her hair dry. Yorshka never once lets go of her mother’s scythe.

Friede kills a giant crab patrolling the lake, cracks open a claw, and scoops out some of the white meat. While she cooks it over a little fire, she reminds herself what Siegward taught her about doneness. She does not want to make Yorshka sick. She coaxes the girl to eat a little before letting her fall into a fitful sleep.

Through all this Vilhelm remains outside the cave, sitting straight-backed against the rock and speaking to no one. This would not be unusual - he and Friede often conduct their business in silence - if not for the crow and the spirit it seems to host. Roslein, Yorshka called her. Friede saw Vilhelm go rigid at the sound of that name.

Now she sits down beside him. His decorum is impeccable as always, but she has known him long enough to detect his subtlest cues. His grip on the stolen saber lying across his knees is wrong. A tiny misalignment, a whisper of something simmering inside him.

“Hast thou aught to say?” Friede asks. 

Vilhelm does not look at her, instead scanning the sky with hollow eyes. Searching for the crow.

“Your Yorshka is a witch,” he says at last. A trace of desperation underlies the words. “She laid a spell upon you.”

Friede has never known her knight to be so agitated. “Nay, not at all.”

“Crossbreeds are a sorcerous lot. Did the painter not bewitch you also? Is that not why you forbade me to kill her?”

“The painter of a new world would not be so easily slain. Curb thy tongue, sir. I have warned thee. Nevertheless…” Friede thinks of all the days Vilhelm stood watch outside her church, a steady and familiar presence, never entering except at her request. “…’twould grieve me were we to be enemies.”

Vilhelm’s reply is almost softer than the flames. “Likewise, my lady.”

“Then let us not be so. Whence cometh thine hatred for Lady Yorshka? She gave thee healing.”

She changed you, Vilhelm does not say. Friede hears it anyway.

“Her interlopers loosed the flame,” he says instead.

“And is that an evil? Canst thou truly say so beyond doubt, having felt the rot thyself? If so, thou’rt false with me and thyself.”

Vilhelm is silent a long while. His hand lifts towards his scarred throat, and Friede knows she has hit her mark.

Whatever Vilhelm’s unspoken doubts, he must feel terribly betrayed. He swore his life to Friede and forsook his future in the Sable Church, dragged himself through hell for her - only to find her allied with a recent enemy. He could not help but see what she has done as a piercing cruelty. The thought is a leaden weight in Friede’s gut. She does not want to wound her most faithful servant. She would much rather he came with her to the new world. After everything he has given her, she owes him a rest.

“I’ve seen her kind,” Vilhelm says stiffly at last. “Ever so righteous, thinking herself a savior. How is it she fooled you? What did she… Pardon, my lady. I say too much.”

“Nay, have it out with me. Speak freely, lest it fester. Have we not both had our fill of rot?”

Vilhelm exhales a slow white cloud. “What swayed you? Make me understand.”

Friede has asked herself that question so many times since she fell in battle, yet she has never articulated the answer to anyone. Even so, the words come easily to her tongue. They are ready.

"She offered me a home.”

Vilhelm does not move, and yet his whole body seems to fold in on itself. No doubt he hears doom in those words.

He makes one last attempt to reach her. “Lady Yuria warned against such kindness. It wears on one’s principles.”

Friede’s voice drops, low and fierce. “Lady Yuria shook her head at me as I burned. Mine own sister. I care little for her warnings.”

Vilhelm has no argument for that.

“Londor was no home,” Friede goes on. “No color, no music. Death-marriages. Emptying our hearts of all feeling to endure the gods’ tyranny. Even as I preached these things, I withheld a small part of myself. I wondered always if I might learn a gentler way. Perhaps ’tis the reason I burned.”

Vilhelm bristles, ready to defend her honor, but Friede presses on. The words tumble out of her.

“I had no wish to remain in the Sable Church once the First Flame took me, as thou knowest. I thought to make mine home in the painted world, among those as lost and forsaken as I. I desired to protect the forlorn, yet I knew no means of doing so save to lock away their flame. Too long had I grown thorns in the dark. I knew nothing of gentleness. At heart I was a Londor witch still, bitter and withered. I could not be Priscilla.”

Friede’s throat constricts with guilt. She swallows hard and forces herself to continue.

“I would not burn again. I sought no new world, only to rot here in exile. I made all Ariandel to pay for my selfishness and fear.”

She can feel Vilhelm’s eyes on her, but she does not look. Until now her knight knew only the general shape of this tale, not the private insecurities she has just shared. If he is losing all respect for her, Friede does not want to see it.

“Then Lady Yorshka came to me. For so long I accounted myself lost, yet she believed I was not yet past hope. With her all things seemed possible, and I yearned to be worthy of her belief. It frightened me. I refused the hope she offered, yet she was undeterred. Even when I well-nigh took her life, she sent word to Irithyll inquiring after my well-being. I could not dismiss such grace. I felt I must try, at the least, to learn what good she saw in my withered soul.

“Now she offereth me a place in the new creation, as I told thee. Under her guidance ’twill be a gentle place in truth. And I…”

Friede’s breath catches. It is a fearful thing she is contemplating. The only thing more frightening than thinking she has no place is learning she might have one after all.

Vilhelm voices the question Friede cannot: “This will please you, my lady? This is truly your wish?”

There is something unprecedented beneath those words. Sad. If the speaker were anyone else, Friede would even call it tender.

“I am not quite decided,” she says, “yet each time I take that girl in mine arms, I desire more and more to go with her to the new world. Call me soft if thou wilt. Perhaps I am. Yet she gave me my life: what wouldst thou do in my place?”

Vilhelm does not answer. Friede knows why. He is quite aware of what he would do in her place, because Friede gave him his life long ago. In return he pledged it to her.

“Thou’st never told me,” she goes on while she has the advantage, “how a peasant boy found himself wandering the roads as a mercenary.”

“I had to make my way in the world. We all must.”

“As a hired killer, at the tender age of thirteen?”

“Fourteen.”

Friede expects no more than that. Vilhelm’s past is a locked door. As far as he will say, his life began with the Sable Church. But this time, perhaps because he is so tired and shaken by recent events, something has shifted. Vilhelm leans against the rock and adjusts his grip on the saber, holding it like a talisman. Then in a careful, flat voice, severing his present self from the past, he begins to speak.

“I led a peasant revolt when I was a boy. We children, we seekers of truth, followed the lord’s guards into the woods one night. We discovered them cutting the throats of laborers who resisted bondage. Being young and ever so righteous, thinking myself a savior, I decided to do something about it. My young fellows joined me.”

Friede notes that these are the same words Vilhelm leveled against Yorshka moments ago. Now he has turned them against himself. He scans the sky for that crow again, and Friede braces for him to speak the inevitable:

“You can imagine how it ended, of course. The ragged children of serfs against well-trained soldiers.”

Humans are as cruel as gods. Aching for all those foolish, brave youths, Friede resists the urge to close her eyes. Vilhelm will see that as a display of pity, and he will hate it.

Yes, Friede can fill in his spare and unsentimental account. The tale is all too common. Noble landowners often took peasant children as “apprentices.” Their lords owned their labor until they came of age. They owned it afterward too, meager pay notwithstanding. Those who protested, adults and children alike, were killed in rebellions or sent to gaol and gallows.

“Was Roslein among the children slain?” Friede asks.

Vilhelm does not answer, and Friede does not press him. His silence is answer enough. His thumb rasps at the hilt of his saber as he concludes his tale - a subtle sign of how much this recounting has discomposed him.

“I believe you know the rest, my lady.”

She does. Friede has never forgotten the night Vilhelm staggered to her gates. A scrawny boy, muddy and bleeding, scarcely able to stand. Ice-blue eyes with a storm behind them. He must have escaped his ill-fated riot and, as he would put it, given himself to Father Death as a sellsword. Untrained as he was, one of his marks overpowered him and left him for dead. Friede was still a young woman then, and already she harbored the flaw that would be her pyre: that misplaced desire to protect. She took him in.

Years passed. The boy received an education, learned to love the Dark, and became a cold-blooded killer. And when he was a man, he took Friede’s hand and swore himself to her service.

So much makes sense to her now. She understands why Vilhelm sometimes spoke of the agony of unearthing secrets. She knows why he reserves an extra dose of bitterness for Yorshka and those like her, who seek to save others. They touch too near to his own boyhood self. He has indeed seen their kind - been their kind. And he paid for it.

Friede does not know what to say. There is nothing she can say that Vilhelm will not resent. All the same, she is sorry for him. She is not so inured to stories of brutality as to be unmoved by this one. She wishes more than ever that her knight would take Yorshka’s hand and find peace for once in his life.

Her fingers find the prayer beads at her waist. Silently she entreats the souls of Vilhelm’s young companions to rest.

Vilhelm lets the hand on his saber fall heavily to his side. “So you see, I am not made for the girl’s gentle place.”

“I will not constrain thee to follow me there, though I wish thou wouldst. I am no longer who thou seek’st,” Friede tells him. She has never been less than absolute in what she wants, and Vilhelm would not appreciate her softening the blow now. “I am sorry, truly, to have hurt thee thus. Go with me only as far as thou wilt.”

Vilhelm makes a soft scoffing noise. “Where else would I go?”

“Return to my sister, if she liveth still. She is not forgiving, but shouldst thou offer her thy sword, I believe she…”

Friede trails off. Vilhelm is shaking his head: it isn’t Yuria he wants.

“Lady Yorshka will not spurn thee,” she ventures. “Consider her, wilt thou? Let her give thee rest. Shouldst thou linger here, I fear thine hollowing will soon overtake thee.” 

It’s a testament to Vilhelm’s stubbornness that it hasn’t happened already.

“Have no pity for me. I made my own choices,” he says, brisk and unreadable once more. 

“Nonetheless, please consider. I would have thee beside me if it be thy will.”

Vilhelm is silent for so long that Friede cannot tell if he is angry with her or simply does not know what to do with himself now that he has revealed his damaged interior. 

He has not yet answered when a rustle comes from the cave behind them. They both turn to see Yorshka sitting up and looking at the silver ring on her left hand. Her eyes are wide and glazed, seeing something beyond her immediate surroundings.

Friede goes to her - the greatwolf watches but does not growl - and gives her a gentle shake. “What is it, child?”

“Two demons,” Yorshka says faintly. “My brother calleth upon any who may come to his aid.”

Friede stops thinking then, as she did when she fought Dunnel. She knows what she must do. “Convey to him that he need not imperil his allies. I shall go.”

Outside, Vilhelm half rises, leaning on the rock wall. “Where do you mean to go?”

“To world’s end, to pay a debt.”

“Permit me to accompany you.”

“Nay, thou’rt in no state.” He must be desperate for battle, the familiarity and the dignity of it, but Friede does not want to lose him. “Remain here and rest. I shall not be long away. Ten minutes, no more.”

Vilhelm looks at her like she has gone mad. “Ten minutes to fell two demons? My lady is ambitious.”

“I shall have with me the Darkmoon Gwyndolin and his ashen one, at the least.” 

Yorshka tries to argue, but Friede is already slipping the summoning ring off the girl’s finger and putting it on her own. If she does not do this quickly, if she considers the fire that demons wield…

Friede tries to smile. “’Tis past time I be brave, little one. If I am to have a place in thy new world, I should like to earn it.”

With a last fearful look, Yorshka holds out the fraying scrap of Ariandel’s canvas, now wet and cold. “Return safely.”

Friede tucks the scrap into her dress and touches the ring. She does not look back.

~~~

The ring drops her on an eroded wall at what, judging from the heaped wreckage all around, is indeed the end of the world. Naturally, Gael’s phantom stands in her way.

“Curious that you should come, Elfriede.” He points down into the yawning hole below.

Friede ignores him and looks into the pit. Far below, red flashes of flame, and yes - the huge shapes of two demons clawing at their foes. For once she blesses her Londor discipline. It alone will allow her to leap from the precipice without acknowledging thought or feeling. 

She closes her mind to all but instinct. Then she falls into emptiness.

The air rushes past her like walls of solid water. Her heart races in time with her fall, not only with fear but with the anticipation of a fight. No matter how much has changed of late, she is still Unkindled: battle is breathing to her. The roaring air whips at her clothes and hair and takes her hesitation with it.

One of the demons careens beneath her just as she nears the bottom of the pit. Friede turns the tip of her scythe downward - Good. I shall strike its head and kill it swiftly.

At the last second, the demon bends down to swipe with its claws. Its head now too low, Friede slams into its back instead. Her scythe drives deep into its leathery skin, grating against bone. The impact jolts through her body and heat envelops her - old, tired heat, not yet kindled to flame. 

The demon shrieks and bucks wildly beneath her. It catapults her into the air, tearing her scythe free. In those few seconds, Friede slows her perception and takes in the battlefield.

Dunstan is fighting the demon she just landed on, clutching his claymore in both hands and bleeding from three long scratches across his chest. Gwyndolin stands at a distance behind a crumbling wall, summoning cascades of magical hail. The Darkmoon Knights, Sirris and Amalie, have engaged the second demon elsewhere in the cavern. Amalie has coated her twinblades with the sticky rouge of Carthus. Clever girl. That will make short work of this. 

The demons themselves are ghastly things. Huge and emaciated, old skin stretched taut over the framework beneath. Their tails have withered down to spurs of exposed bone. They have long, bat-like ears and folded wings writhing with a smoke of humanity sprites. One has bulging yellow eyes, blank and feral, while the other’s are covered by membranous skin. These creatures have fallen far since Izalith was at its height.

Friede lands catlike beside Dunstan. He looks her up and down and pants, “Never thought I’d be so glad to see you.”

She has just begun a response - “A pity I did not strike this one’s head” - when the demon she just hit screeches. Dunstan grabs Friede and yanks her bodily aside. Purple mist streams across the floor and explodes into shimmering clouds of toxin. The moldy smell makes Friede’s throat itch.

“We stay close, then,” Friede says. Experience has taught her that when fighting large enemies, the safest place to be is directly under them where they cannot reach.

The blind demon rears back and hammers down one fist, then the other. By silent accord Friede and Dunstan split off to either side of those raking talons. Dunstan darts around to the demon’s rear and lands a well-placed slice across its ankle. The beast howls and stumbles almost to one knee. Meanwhile, Friede ducks underneath its body and slashes at its chest. Blood drips down around her, hot with the promise of flame. Friede lets it anoint her scarred face. Her sole thought is of Yorshka walking into that pool of death without hesitation.

The demon leaps away and lands awkwardly on its injured leg. This does not prevent it from exhaling another burst of poison mist. Friede and Dunstan throw themselves aside in opposite directions while the foul fog explodes. 

Before it has cleared, the demon charges unseeing in Friede’s direction. Its claws score the ground and fling up clods of dirt. Friede slips between them with frost trailing behind her. When she is behind the demon, she lets it erupt, a hundred icy fangs nipping at the beast’s legs. She arches backwards to let the whipping spiny tail pass over her face. As she bends she sees purple stars rain down from above - Gwyndolin’s magic.

Despite the stinging drips on her face, she smiles. This is a heady feeling. How long has it been since she fought beside others, allies who are not broken as Father Ariandel was?

At last, Sir Siegward, I see the merit of thy counsel.

~~~


Dunstan is angry.

The demon bends to breathe poison in his face. He lingers close for longer than he ought, thrusting at its head. It’s still too high. He only manages to nick its jaw before he has to run through its legs to avoid the mist. The heat stings the cuts on his chest. As he retreats, he sees Friede jump above the toxic fog and open a long gash down the demon’s side.

Dunstan isn’t angry at her. He is angry at the demons for being here in Firelink Shrine, the one place in Lordran he was ever safe. The place where Laurentius taught him pyromancy. Now all that is ruined, like the rest of the world.

He grips his claymore in both hands and hacks at the demon’s tail, cleaving off a substantial portion at the end. Blood sprays across his cheeks.

It probably isn’t the demons’ fault. They probably didn’t mean to desecrate this place; they’re just trapped here. Their flame is going out too. Still, Dunstan is angry at them.

The demon whirls around, severed tail spattering scarlet drops. It drags its claws along the ground and sweeps them upward. Dunstan backsteps in time to avoid them, but not the dirt flung into his eyes. He falls to one knee and rubs at his face. He feels a burst of chill air as Friede lays down ice shards in front of him. From above him comes the high chiming of Gwyndolin loosing another spell.

Dunstan is angry at the demons for putting Gwyndolin in danger. Isn’t it enough that the god can barely breathe? Now he has to fight these monsters, and he’s using too much magic.

He should never have come here.

~~~


Gwyndolin is so tired. He has been tired since coming to the dreg heap, the Dark weighing on him, suffocating him. But he is not going to stop. He does not know how - has never known how. 

He pulls his arm back as if drawing a bowstring. A luminous blue arrow forms between his fingers. He holds it quivering there, letting it build and build, even as his vision starts to blur.

Dunstan cannot be Lord of Hollows. He has always protected Gwyndolin, bled for Gwyndolin.

Now I shall protect him.

Gwyndolin lets the arrow fly.

~~~

When Dunstan opens his watering eyes, the first thing he sees is a blue arrow soaring across the cavern. It strikes the demon right between its eyes. The creature howls and reels and crumples. Its head is finally low enough for Dunstan to reach.

If he is destined to become Lord of Hollows and steal the flame, if he is the cause of all this destruction…

Friede gestures with one hand. After you.

…then it isn’t the demons he should be angry with. It’s himself.

He drives his claymore to the hilt into the creature’s head.

~~~


Sirris is terrified and exhilarated all at once. She is watching Amalie dance around and around their demon, staying as close to its pounding claws as she can and then ducking to slash at its legs and flanks. It is riddled with gashes and the ground around it is red, but it isn’t quite done yet. As the demon’s tail whirls above Amalie’s head, one of the exposed bones catches her face. She staggers away, blinded by blood dripping into her eyes.

Sirris knocks her out of the way just as the demon’s arms punch down. The ground quakes where they fall.

I did not say I could love you only to lose you within the hour!

“Restraint, Amalie,” Sirris rasps. 

She scrambles to her feet, drawing the demon away with thrusts of her estoc, luring its head down to breathe poison. Sirris jumps out of the path of the toxic mist and stabs at the beast from the side. She does not have time to see whether Amalie has gotten up. All her attention is on her foe. She is no Black Knight. Her sword feels so small and thin against such a creature.

Stop it, ma’am. Don’t think like that.

Her junior’s voice fills her mind through their shared humanity. In the same moment, Amalie lifts her talisman and hurls an incanted shockwave at the demon. It staggers, dazed, and collapses with a thud. As it opens its mouth to shriek, Sirris thrusts her estoc into its mouth, up and out through its head.

~~~

The blind demon falls first, the sighted one second. The first crumbles into ash. Embers and humanity sprites spiral out of its body, red and black. The second demon remains whole.

For a moment, all five combatants are still. Transfixed with horror, they watch the red-and-black remnants migrate across the cavern like insects fleeing winter. These little pilgrims sink into the second demon’s body. It begins to glow from within, first red, then orange, brighter and hotter every second. 

Nay, Friede thinks. Just that.

Dunstan catches her eye. “I thought you were afraid of fire.”

“I am, ashen one.”

He chuckles. “Then you’d best get out of here while you can.”

The reborn demon pushes itself up, wounds sealing in the heat of its blazing body, and flings its wings wide. They are ragged and torn. Humanity sprites cluster in these rents and fill them up. The remains of the countless Undead who passed through this place in days of old, now drawn to the only fire left in the world.

The beast roars. Heat rolls across the cavern. Friede almost gags.

She takes a tighter grip on her scythe. I will pay my debts.

The demon rises onto its hind legs and erupts. A wave of fire and humanity ripples across the cave and sends everyone scrambling for cover behind the broken walls. Friede squeezes herself in beside Gwyndolin. The instinctive need to make themselves small compels them to press close together. The stones burn red behind their backs as fire batters at them.

“Where is my sister?” Gwyndolin shouts above the tumult.

“Safe in Ariandel. The greatwolf is with her. She will give thee cause for pride when thou seest her again.”

Gwyndolin mouths the word when.

Friede nods and clasps his arm. “Let us be done with this.”

She gets up and, pushing aside the warnings screaming through her limbs, runs straight at the demon. Her scythe ignites in blackflame at her touch. The fire won’t cause this creature much harm, but it will lend her strength. 

In answer, the beast tilts its head back and spouts fire into the air. Small balls of flame rain down around Friede, arcing towards her. Light-footed, she weaves and twists between them. As a girl she loved the idea of being a dancer, though such frivolity was discouraged in Londor. 

As she evades, a massive turquoise beam streaks over her head, bringing with it cold clean air. It collides with the demon’s exposed chest. Friede ducks under the beam and drags her scythe along the creature’s belly. The power it absorbed has thickened its skin, but still the cut paints the stones with blood.

Then the demon drops without warning, trying to crush her. She has to roll out of the way. The fire on the ground catches at her skirts. Blind panic threatens to seize her, and she falls on her knees, beating at the fabric and blistering her hands.

Dunstan does not leave her vulnerable. In seconds he is at her side. He pulls the demon away from her, and it lowers its head and snaps at him. He answers it with with wide swings of his claymore.

Steadying her breathing, Friede thinks how good it is not to be alone.



~~~


Gwyndolin is fading. He knows this even before his great comet shimmers out of existence. That spell cost him dear; now his chest is tight and his vision darkening. He huddles behind his broken wall and tries to recover himself, but his breath will not release. 

He cannot stop.

Gwyndolin presses his free hand to the wall and levers himself up. Dunstan and Friede are underneath the demon, hacking at its legs in an attempt to bring it down. Amalie and Sirris are circling it and harrying it with their magic. Gwyndolin will support them however he can, for as long as he can. Until he faints if need be. Whatever it takes to end this fight quickly.

He forsakes all refinement. With hardly a pause between casts, he sends spell after spell at the demon. Comet shards, star showers, homing soul masses. 

Thou’rt too devoted to thy studies, Gwyndolin. Thou wilt overtax thyself. Time for bed now.

That’s what his father would have told him if he were still a child, but Gwyn is not here. Gwyndolin’s only obstacle now is his own endurance.

Magic arrows, levitating rocks, crystal shards. He does not stop to see whether his spells find their mark. He can hear the answer in the demon’s howling.

The weight on his chest increases. Shaking, wheezing, he carries on.

He does not know how long he has been doing this before faintness washes over him and he sags against the wall. He watches Sirris lift her hand and draw the humanity down to her. It coalesces around her, forming sharp-edged armor and a horned helm. A shadow greatsword takes shape in her hands. The humanity has made her into a Black Knight.

It’s all an illusion, of course, but it seems to give her courage. Her greatsword two-handed, she leaps at the demon’s head and deals it a heavy blow. Soon Amalie too is armored in humanity and swinging with all her might at the creature’s tail.

They have turned the beast’s little friends against it. Precise and elegant, Gwyndolin thinks as his legs fold beneath him.

~~~

The demon seems to know Friede is afraid of fire. Dunstan cannot keep it away from her, no matter how he heaves at its legs, no matter what Sirris and Amalie do to distract it. It drives her back again and again. It slashes at her with claws that leave blazing air behind or sends huge flaming orbs after her. 

To Friede’s credit, Dunstan never sees her flinch. Every time the demon forces her back, she closes in again, carving away at its legs. The hem of her dress is singed black and there is a nasty, shiny burn on her upper arm. She does not seem to notice. Whatever she is fighting for, she is serious about it.

And that is a blessing. Dunstan noticed some time ago that Gwyndolin’s spells have stopped.

He and Friede fall into a rhythm. It’s strange that two people who were recently enemies should find a pattern so quickly, but they do. Experience and instinct override their history. They take turns ducking in and out between flaming claw strikes. Each time one of them cuts a tendon, the demon stumbles a little more. Soon it is lurching from side to side, unable to leap.

It is Dunstan who severs the last bit of connective tissue and brings the demon crashing down. He rolls out of harm’s way. When he rights himself, he unhooks Vilhelm’s greatsword from his belt and gives Friede a nod. 

She needs no explanation. She stows her scythe on her back and holds out her hand for the onyx blade. It kindles black and silver at her touch.

In one fluid motion, she jumps onto the fallen demon’s back. The creature’s dwindling flames grasp and lick all around her. Friede pays them no heed as she raises the onyx blade like an executioner. A fearsome light shines in her eyes.

She brings the sword singing down through the demon’s neck.

~~~

The ringing silence of after.

Friede observes what comes next as if from a distance. She is still numb, outside herself. Only dimly aware that she is drenched in blood. Hardly feeling her stinging hands and face and arms.

The combatants scatter. Dunstan drops his claymore and hurries to Gwyndolin’s side, Sirris and Amalie with him. “Prithee do not fret,” the god murmurs. “I was overeager, ’tis all.”

Friede observes other things, too. A tattered pile of fabric lies beneath a ruined archway - it might once have been a bedroll. A rusting cup rests in the ashes of the bonfire pit. Signs of a campsite long abandoned.

On the edge of the pit is a book. Its cover begins crumbling to dust in Friede’s hands. 

She cracks it open. Between the pages, dried and preserved, is a five-petaled white flower. It still glows faintly. Just like Yorshka’s flowers in Irithyll.

Chapter Text

Sirris is the first to pull herself together. For as long as Dunstan has known her, she has had a head for organization. It is she who digs through Dunstan’s pack of supplies until she finds the cloths and sharp-scented concoction Ursa prepared for cleaning wounds. Everyone else is still captive to the lethargy that often follows a battle. They sit on the damp ground like bits of broken wall, adrenaline draining out of them. Amalie with half her face red with blood from the cut on her brow. Friede looking without seeing at the crumbling book in her hands, like she isn’t in her own body. Gwyndolin huddled cold and half conscious against Dunstan. Dunstan unable to think of anything but that.

Sirris comes to Gwyndolin first, her face a careful mask. “I am not the healer Lady Yorshka is, but I shall have to do.” 

She takes her captain’s hands in hers and folds them over her silk talisman. Golden light washes over them both. Gwyndolin lets out a shivery breath and relaxes a little, but his breathing does not ease. His wounds are not the sort that can be healed by the usual means.

“What were you thinking, Lin? Using so much magic in your state? You’re a fool.” Dunstan’s voice is hoarse and tight.

The smallest of smiles touches Gwyndolin’s bloodless lips. “I know it.”

We can’t do anything for him. That is all Dunstan thinks for some time.

His world narrows around Gwyndolin’s rattling breaths. Several things happen within his sight but without his notice. Sirris washes the blood from Amalie’s face with a tenderness she once reserved for Gwyndolin alone. She conjures the golden needle and thread that Miquella taught the Darkmoon Knights and stitches Amalie’s wound, then works a heal to speed its mending along. Amalie drips Ursa’s stinging potion over the cuts on Dunstan’s chest and stitches up the deepest of the three. Dunstan hardly feels the pain or the warmth of her healing miracle.

Friede looks as numb as he is. She is hunched over the ancient bonfire pit, away from the rest of the group. She does not move when Sirris dabs at the shiny burn on her upper left arm or the little ones on her face, where the demon’s blood spattered her. She just stares into the ashes. 

Dunstan knows how she feels. Friede is consumed by a singular thought, just like he is. Her world consists of the flames she just faced. She can see nothing else.

“I like you much better when you’re not trying to kill us,” Dunstan mutters.

Friede does not look up, but a tiny spark returns to her eyes. “Likewise.”

When they are more or less recovered, it becomes clear to them all that Gwyndolin cannot go on like this. Whatever strength he had left, he spent it in the battle. His silver head is too light on Dunstan’s shoulder, as if this place has diminished him. His breathing is worse than ever. So faint and wheezing. Dunstan listens to every breath in agony. All he can do is try to keep Gwyndolin warm. He has not felt so helpless since Friede drove her scythe through Yorshka’s shoulder.

“Shall I fetch thee thy sister?” Friede offers. She is emerging from her defensive cocoon, and her eyes are sharp and concerned. “Her healing is miraculous at present. I have seen it. Ariandel bequeathed to her all its dying strength, though I doubt ’twill long last.”

“Nay.” Gwyndolin’s voice is little louder than the lapping water on the cavern floor. “Bring her not to this place. I…will not have her…see me thus. ‘Twill do no good. Mine ailment is…no disease or wound. She…cannot aid me.”

“It’s the Dark,” Dunstan finishes. He cannot bear to listen to Gwyndolin’s labored speech any longer. “It’s so much stronger here than it is at home.”

And it’s killing him.

Dunstan slams the door on that thought as soon as it forms. It leads down too many dangerous paths.

He might be the root cause of Gwyndolin’s condition.

The bedroll in the archway and the cup in the ashes of the fire pit might be his.

He might have done something terrible, something he regretted, and ended up living in exile here at world’s end.

He tells himself he does not recognize the bedroll or any of the silverware strewn about this cave. They are far too old to identify. As for the book falling to dust in Friede’s hands, well, that might have belonged to anyone who lived in Irithyll and loved Yorshka’s flowers. It need not be his.

But his belt pouch is full of carvings of Gwyndolin, and their weight has become accusing.

Why have you been collecting these as if they are yours? they seem to ask.

I don’t deny I might have made them. Doesn’t mean I’m the one who hurt -

“Perhaps we might draw it out of him.”


Friede’s voice snaps Dunstan back to himself. For a moment he thinks she is talking about drawing out his unknown guilt, but no. She is looking thoughtfully at Gwyndolin.

“In Londor we taught a spell for extracting humanity from our foes,” she goes on. “Why should it not extract Dark in like manner? Humanity is of the Dark. Do any among ye possess a dark hand? I left mine behind long ago.”

Sirris folds her arms. “Absolutely not. We will not use Darkwraith magic on our captain.”

“I have a dark hand.” Amalie’s words are small and flat. Her left hand is glowing a menacing red.

“I do not recall receiving thee at the Sable Church,” Friede says.

“You never did. I got this off a pilgrim in the Undead Settlement. The Deep witches were burning anyone who went hollow, and I was afraid I’d be next, so I…stole the humanity I needed. The captain knows about it. So does Sirris.”

This confession does not startle Dunstan. Amalie is hardly the first Undead to find less than honorable means of staving off the curse. What does surprise him is Gwyndolin’s knowledge of it and willingness to give Amalie a chance regardless. The Dark Sun of Anor Londo, with all his talk of heretics and sin, would not have done so. Gwyndolin has grown.

Thinking this only stokes Dunstan’s anger. Why is this happening now? He was just getting better! He was just learning to be happy!

“I’d like to use this to help someone for once,” Amalie adds. Her green eyes are liquid with hurt but unwavering. “I’ll be gentle. The pilgrim who gave this to me said I had a subtle touch.”

Nothing about Amalie is subtle, her dark hand least of all. Dunstan has seen that magic, felt its touch in New Londo. There was no gentleness in that Darkwraith’s obscene embrace as it ripped Dunstan’s essence from him. But then, Dark isn’t supposed to be in Gwyndolin. He has a Fire soul. Dark is poison to him, not essence.

“Do it.” 

The words are instinctive. They slip from Dunstan before he can think.

“Is the captain to have a say in this, or has he appointed you to speak for him?” Sirris demands.

“If we do nothing, he will die,” Friede says with some pity. Dunstan hates that she is right - that she has said what he cannot.

He searches Gwyndolin’s pale face. “What do you want to do, Lin? Do you think this will help?”

If you say no, I’ll hand you to Amalie anyway.

Gwyndolin rests a hand ever so lightly on Dunstan’s arm. “Let her come to me.”

Dunstan exhales, heavy with relief, and shifts Gwyndolin into Amalie’s arms. The girl nestles her captain in her lap and closes her glowing red hand around his throat. Her fingers find the large vessels on either side, where Gwyndolin’s pulse beats. Softly, not aiming to strangle.

Gwyndolin’s eyes are locked on Amalie’s. There is not the least bit of fear in his gaze.

“Sorry about this, sir,” she says. “No matter what I do, it’s going to hurt.”

Her hand flares white. Gwyndolin grits his teeth and clutches Amalie’s wrist. His feet jerk and beat at the ground. Sirris grips Dunstan’s shoulder so hard it goes numb.

Dark wriggling lines appear beneath Gwyndolin’s skin. A few squirm across his cheeks and brow and hands, but they are thickest on his neck, where his veins turn nearly black. It’s as if his blood is infected. Dunstan knows that beneath his tunic, the god’s chest must be even worse.


The writhing darkness flows through Gwyndolin’s skin and up into Amalie’s hand. It is as Friede said: Amalie is drawing the Dark out of him. Gwyndolin seems to know it too. Though his body twitches, he does not cry out for his knight to stop. 

Amalie works for a few seconds that seem like hours. Beneath her hand the dark lines begin to fade from Gwyndolin’s skin. At last he gasps as the catch in his breathing releases. He coughs on the sudden influx of free air. When he recovers, panting and coated in sweat, the whistling sound in his chest has stopped.

Relief washes over Dunstan, mingling with instinctive revulsion for what he has just seen. He sags against a bit of broken wall. Cold sweat breaks out all over him and he takes deep breaths to keep from being sick.

Meanwhile, Amalie lifts her left hand above her head and opens her fist. Black smoke spirals up and out, towards the pit mouth high above.

“No wonder you couldn’t breathe, sir,” she says. “That’s not normal Dark, and I don’t want it in me either. It’s wild. Greedy, almost. Like there’s nothing to tell it when to stop.”

And there isn’t. If a Lord of Hollows was at work here, then Fire did not merely go out. It was taken from its place in the natural order and locked away inside a human. It will not rekindle from its ashes when its appointed time comes. Tiny flames will not dance anew across the darkness, as Elisabeth saw in her vision. The cycle is broken and the balance gone.

Amalie squeezes Gwyndolin’s hand. “I’m sure the Dark will get into you again if you stay here, but I hope I gave you some time.”

She helps Gwyndolin sit up, and he puts on that brave martyr’s smile that Dunstan finds unbearable.

“I will be better awhile, I should think. ’Twas clever thinking on thy part, Lady Friede.”

Friede dips her head in acknowledgment. “I do not wish Lady Yorshka to lose her brother. The girl knoweth too much of grief. And thy touch, Blade Amalie, is subtle indeed. The Dark cometh eagerly to thee. Thou wouldst make a fine knight of Londor.”

Amalie grins. “No. They almost caught me for good, but I got away. Like you.”

Dunstan does not hear much of this. He is looking at Gwyndolin, whose eyes say that the only cure for him is to get out of this place and go home. 

He reaches into his belt pouch and fingers the carvings of Gwyndolin. He thinks of how desperate he was to help the god just now. He thinks of what that might say about him.

Perhaps it’s time he stopped asking if he is the Lord of Hollows and started asking why.

(The carvings are memorials. The dark moonlight butterfly sounded like it was weeping.)

He can begin to guess.

~~~

The girl is crying. She has been crying for a quarter of an hour. That is almost half as long as Lady Elfriede has been gone, and that is three times as long as the ten minutes she anticipated.

Vilhelm should be with her. Weakness be damned; he should be with her! He cannot even rest properly because the crossbreed - oh, very well, the dragon girl - will not stop crying. Soft but steady, her little body shaking beneath Friede’s cloak.

What is he meant to do about that?

Vilhelm turns his head towards her, joints creaking in the cold. “Hush, girl.”

This does not have the desired effect. It makes things worse, in fact.

“I want my brother,” Yorshka whimpers.

“Your brother isn’t here.”

On some silent cue, the crow lands in front of their little hollow in the rock. It tilts its head at Vilhelm, reproachful. He cannot help but see Roslein in that gesture.

It is not. The dragon girl played a fortune-teller’s trick, no more.

The crow does not move. Vilhelm does not try to scare it off.

He considers Yorshka again. It is an inconvenient fact that she stopped him from bleeding to death. He owes her a debt, and Londor folk settle their debts. They are peculiar about that. For all their deceptions and violence, they have an incongruous sense of honor when it comes to paying what they owe.

Honor is an odd thing. It changes depending on who holds it. To most people, locking defenseless little painters in attics would not be considered knightly behavior. But to Vilhelm, the greater dishonor would have been disobeying his lady. Among the chivalric virtues, duty and fealty have always held pride of place in his mind.

But this is different. The girl saved his life. There is no ambiguity in that, no slippery definitions of honor. Blood debts are inviolable; they cannot be waived or disregarded. Only life pays for life. These are truths. Knights of every order accept them, and lay people too.

Well, Vilhelm will just have to break that particular code. It would not be the first time he has been selective about which knightly values he upholds, and how. He has no interest in devoting his life to this soft-hearted child. He does not want the peace and rest she offers (what does he want?), no matter how Elfriede may try to convince him otherwise. He is not made for peace - would not know what to do with it.

But what else is there to do? Ariandel is burning and Elfriede has declared her intent to go to the new painted world and Vilhelm has always gone where Elfriede leads. 

(He would not have to stay in the gentle new world, would he? He could come and go. Visit his lady and ensure her well-being. Lay down his sword a while and pick it up again when he grew restless.) 

For Dark’s sake, he does not know what to think! It was all so clear a few hours ago. Now his dead friend is staring at him out of a crow’s beady eyes, condemning him for being so callous to the girl whimpering behind him. She must still be in pain from her swim. Dragon-blooded though she is, that tainted water exacted a toll.

Vilhelm glares at the crow, as if this is all its fault. It stares back.

“What do you want?” he demands.

The crow says nothing. It doesn’t need to. Vilhelm knows.

You’re too soft for your own good, Ros.

He is surprised at how readily that old nickname returns to his mind. Surprised, too, at how much it stings.

And you’re too late. Do you think to use that girl in the cave to change me? That’s a fairy story. You know better than to believe in that sort of thing. I am what I am, always.

No, Vilhelm does not want to be softened or saved. Never has. If the crow is indeed hosting Roslein’s spirit, it should know that.

He supposes he must do something about Yorshka’s crying, though. Elfriede will not be pleased if she returns to find the girl in this state.

So Vilhelm pushes himself up, limbs protesting, and approaches the back of the shallow cave. The greatwolf curled beside Yorshka lifts its shaggy head and growls low in its throat. Vilhelm stops where he stands and raises both hands. 

“Stand down. I won’t harm her. I don’t fancy tangling with you.”

In all truth, he hasn’t the strength for it just now. It’s enough that he was nearly eaten by flies; he has no desire to be eaten by a wolf.

The animal goes on growling softly but makes no move towards him. Vilhelm waits a moment to be sure he won’t be attacked, then moves closer to Yorshka.

She has tossed herself onto her side with her back to him. Lying beside her is a fine white and gold bell. It’s a delicate little thing, like its owner. Vilhelm is surprised that it, like its owner, has survived this long. 

He crouches and lifts the bell from the cave floor. The girl makes no move to stop him. She is either asleep or too delirious to notice. Vilhelm calls to mind the only healing miracle he knows and gives the chime a ring.

Vilhelm is not a natural healer - quite the opposite. But the chime makes it sound as if he is. He has never heard a bell with such a sweet tone, much less associated it with healing. The people of Londor performed such miracles with rough canvas talismans, silent and utilitarian. This is so different it startles him. The golden light that wells up around the bell is warmer and clearer than any he ever conjured with his scraps of cloth. He feels a bit of strength return to his own limbs even though he is not the miracle’s object.

The girl feels the effects too. Her limbs unfold, no longer drawn tight into a ball. Her breathing evens and softens. She tucks her face contentedly into the folds of Elfriede’s cloak.

Vilhelm sets the chime down beside her. 

There. Healing for healing, hers in exchange for his.

When he turns around, the crow is still standing just outside the cave. Without a word it conveys to him that he and Yorshka are far from even.

Does he care? Not really. He has no reason to care.

Except that his lady cares, of course, for reasons Vilhelm now understands too well. She offered me a home, Elfriede said. That was always her deepest yearning. She never said so in as many words, but Vilhelm knew.

He watches Yorshka’s thin shoulders rise and fall with her breathing. Such a fragile thing she is, yet she holds the power to grant Elfriede’s dearest wish.

Perhaps that is why Vilhelm resents her so.

~~~

Friede leaves sooner than Dunstan would have liked. She’s bloody useful in a fight, and there will surely be more of those to come. 

Dunstan offers her Vilhelm’s greatsword to take back with her (he still prefers his old claymore). Friede refuses. She says that such charity would only insult her knight. Apparently, Londor folk have to earn back whatever they lose in a duel; they cannot simply accept it as a gift. Dunstan finds a grudging respect for that attitude.

When Gwyndolin feels well enough to walk, Dunstan helps him up and crosses to the tunnel at the far end of the cavern.

“I do not ask you to accompany me further,” Gwyndolin tells his two knights. It’s a relief not to hear him wheezing with every other breath. “I suspect the danger will only grow.”

“Sir, we swore to put ourselves in danger for you. Let us keep our vows,” Amalie says.

That’s the end of it. Dunstan knows Gwyndolin is too tired and heartsick to argue. Dunstan is no better. He has spotted another one of those carvings of Gwyndolin, squeezed into a niche in the rocks.

Dunstan pries it free and runs his thumb over the wood. Speak to me. Did I make you? Why did I leave you all over world’s end?

“Lin, I think something happened to you,” he says. It must be said. “I think the Dark made you sick, wore you down over the years, and you didn’t… You didn’t live to see the new age of Fire.”

The words stick in his throat like choking poison. He has always known that Gwyndolin is very old and not in robust health. He has always known that the age of Dark might last longer than what remains of the god’s life. Certainly Gwyndolin must know it too. But neither of them have ever said this aloud. The words have only grown more bitter with time.

Gwyndolin does not look at Dunstan when he answers. Eyes dead ahead, focused. Or unwilling to think about this.

“If that is so, why wouldst thou steal the flame?”

Dunstan touches the carving’s peaceful face. “Grief is a funny thing.”

~~~

The summoning ring delivers Friede back to Ariandel in a flash of purple light. The winter breeze slaps her burned face. She blinks against the cold brightness, so different from the pit she just left behind. The flames on the ground are not different enough, though. It seems she is fated to encounter fire wherever she goes. She holds herself very still and forces herself not to flinch.

I slew a mad pyromancer. I slew a demon of Izalith. I am here still. What have I now to fear?

As her disorientation passes, she realizes she is back outside the shallow cave on the frozen lake, where she left Yorshka sleeping. She considers her reflection in the melting ice clinging to the cliffs. Distorted though the image is, it’s still plain she looks a mess. Her hair is matted with dried sweat. The hem of her skirt is blackened; a bandage encircles her left arm just below the shoulder. Her face is speckled with tiny new burns. None of this will put Vilhelm at ease.

There isn’t much to be done about it now. She combs her fingers through her hair, working out some of the knots. If she can make herself a bit more presentable, perhaps -

“Thirty minutes.”

She turns around. Vilhelm is standing in front of her, straight-backed and rigid. Of course he is.

“Pardon?” she says.


“Thirty minutes, as my heart beats.”

His eyes are already roving over her, landing on every injury. 

Friede tries to lighten her voice. “Didst thou keep time in mine absence? We required healing and rest after the battle was done, ’tis all. The fighting itself was swift. No more than ten minutes, as I told thee.”

With a dizzying rush, she adds, “I beheaded a demon with thine onyx sword.”

“That is not a beheading sword, my lady.”

Friede cannot help but smile. This is how Vilhelm expresses concern.

“It served my purpose all the same,” she says. 

Vilhelm’s shoulders relax an inch.

Friede peers into the gloom of the hollow. “How fareth Lady Yorshka?”

“She was distressed a moment ago. She wept for her brother.” All at once Vilhelm’s voice hardens, turning bitter. “When I lay among the flies, I wept for no one.”

“Thou’rt a warrior grown. The girl is not.”

And I wager thou wert not without fear when death came for thee in that pit. Do not pretend to be unfeeling, sir. I see thee.


Vilhelm glances over his shoulder at the crow pacing back and forth nearby. His mouth remains hard but he does not argue.

Friede looks at Yorshka a moment longer, checking her breathing, ensuring she is asleep. She lowers her voice. “Her brother is not well. He cannot bear the Dark at world’s end. ’Tis stronger than any we have known. I may yet return to defend him ere all is done. Lady Yorshka cannot know a word of this, hearest thou?”

She moves into the cave and kneels beside Yorshka. The girl looks more peaceful than when Friede left, no longer shivering with pain. Beneath the patches of pearly scales, her cheeks have regained some color. 

Friede touches her shoulder. “Be not afraid, child. I am with thee.”

Still bundled in Friede’s cloak, Yorshka turns drowsily over and reaches for her - or for Gwyndolin, more likely. Friede scoops her into her arms. It’s getting easier to do this, more natural every time. She is beginning to welcome the girl’s weight against her chest. Even weak and asleep, Yorshka is teaching Friede gentleness. 

Vilhelm comes in after a moment and leans on the cave wall, arms folded, watchful as always. “I was not aware the old lord fathered a crossbr - a dragon child.”

“He did not. Yorshka is the daughter of Priscilla and an Undead called Dunnel. She was born in Ariamis and fled it in her infancy, when an intruder slew her mother. In Anor Londo, Gwyndolin took her in and claimed her as his sister. She came to him as thou cam’st to me.”

If this last sentence makes an impression on Vilhelm, he gives no sign. That’s to be expected. He never reveals much of his interior.

“She left the painted world while a god still ruled in Anor Londo? Then she did so under pain of death.”

“Such was Gwyn’s law, yes.”

“Yet Gwyn’s son did not keep it.”

Friede hears faint curiosity in Vilhelm’s voice. It’s enough to encourage her to go on.

“Nay, he did not. And what think’st thou of this: ’twas the Darkmoon Gwyndolin and his Unkindled, Dunstan - our interlopers - who put out the First Flame.”

Friede looks at Vilhelm as she says this. She wants to see if she can read any trace of a reaction in his hollow face. She cannot. His utter stillness gives him away instead. He only adopts that defensive posture when something unsettles him.

“This is true?” How perfectly controlled his voice is.

“It is. I have seen their world. All is dark.”

“Yet this Unkindled would not be Lady Yuria’s Lord of Hollows.”

“I believe he feared ‘twould make of him a darker sort of Gwyn. Perhaps he was right.”

“A god snuffed the First Flame.” Vilhelm gives a dry, disbelieving little laugh. “What madness came over him?”

“He was nigh devoured by Aldrich of the Deep, a Lord of Cinder. That was the beginning of it.”

“…Ah.”

Vilhelm says nothing after that. Friede can feel him considering her and the girl in her arms. Weighing everything he just heard and trying to work out what to make of it.

Yorshka sleeps a while longer. The last of her shivers subside. When she wakes, she has the look of one who has reached a decision. She is still more pale and shaky than Friede would like, but her eyes are clear. 

She sits up in Friede’s arms. “There is something I must do.”

Not yet another trial, Friede thinks. How much more can Yorshka endure? 

“And what is that?”

“I must speak with someone. He showed kindness to me and my companions when first we came here. I wish to bid him farewell ere I cut Ariandel’s last threads and loose the flame in full.”

“Where is this person?”


“He resideth in the corvian settlement.”


Friede’s stomach flutters. According to Vilhelm’s reports, the rot was always worst in the corvian settlement. Poisoned water and sickened residents. Friede supposes she should see it before it burns, look upon the consequences of her meddling. She does not want to take Yorshka back there, however. That is no place for a girl still fragile in body and heart.

But she has been with Yorshka long enough to recognize that light in her eyes. There will be no arguing.

So they go, three wanderers and their bestial guide. Yorshka rides on the greatwolf’s back with Priscilla’s scythe across her lap. She would have preferred to walk. Only with a great deal of nudging and licking did the animal persuade her otherwise. She is dressed now, her clothes having dried in the heat of the flames. Her dress is rumpled, the hem still stained brown with old blood. Friede’s too-large cloak almost swallows her. Despite all that, she is regal. She holds herself with as much solemn dignity as any queen.

Friede walks ahead of her party, up the steep cliff paths from the lake and through the woods. She is scouting for trouble. She finds none. The birch-women are burning, their screams silenced. The flies lie dead in pools of blood and rot. Ariandel is going to sleep for the last time.

This relative calm leaves Friede to listen to the conversation behind her.

“Art thou recovered, Sir Vilhelm?” Yorshka asks.

Careful, child. He is wounded in his heart and that will not make him gentle.

Vilhelm answers with his usual acid, though not quite as biting as usual. “What concern am I of yours? What compels you to show me courtesy?”

“I know what it is to be a lost thing. Wert thou a lost thing too?”

It’s plain this is not really a question. Yorshka must have overhead the story Vilhelm told before Friede left to fight the demons.

Vilhelm must know that, too. Friede hears his doors snap shut. “Cease your prying.”

“I do not pry. I only wish to heal where I may.”

“How did you come so far with that soft heart of yours? Your mother’s murder did not take it from you? Nor your brother’s brush with Aldrich?”

“Nay. I held tight to it and found strength in it.”

A derisive huff. “You are -”

“A fool, yes. I am.”

That statement contains no concessions, no shame. Friede hears the unspoken implication: I am the sort of fool the world needs.

At least they are speaking to one another, Friede thinks. That is a start.


And it seems Yorshka can hold her own.

The corvian settlement is not far from the lake. Friede does not have much time to brace herself for the sight that unfolds when they reach the hillside overlooking the village. It is every bit the nightmare Vilhelm described. Only the tang of burning sap covers the stench of decay. Beneath a stone bridge, the water in the moat is reddish-brown with blood. Bodies litter the water and the paths. The corvians have grown emaciated as twigs, their tails heavy with caked filth. The flames licking over them appear gentle.

Friede wonders what this place looked like when it was new and its residents had not yet gone mad with despair, when the weavings of corvian shamans hung on all the walls. The stone-built houses look sturdy even now, roofs neatly thatched. 

What would Friede have done had she seen this horror before? Would it have changed her course?

“Prithee look away,” she tells Yorshka.

The girl does not. She gazes on this landscape of death with tears in her eyes, and Friede forces herself not to close her own. She owes this much at least to the dead: to look at what she did to them in her fear and selfishness. Every wretched body tells her that this fate was not preferable to burning.

“I could not save them,” Yorshka says tightly.

Friede clenches one hand into a fist. The nails dig into her palm. “No. I made certain of that.”

Vilhelm keeps his thoughts to himself.

The greatwolf leads them to a rope ladder. At the top is a neat little cottage built on an elevated platform. Yorshka relinquishes Priscilla’s scythe to the beast, who takes the weapon in its teeth so she can climb.

Through the doorway, Friede sees that the house is small and spare. It consists of two stone-floored rooms, a countertop for preparing food at one end and a nest at the other. It is so bizarrely clean compared to the rest of the settlement. Friede wonders if its owner has warded it with a magic unknown to her.

That owner is an old corvian. He meets them on the threshold. He is as stooped as his fellows, but not quite so thin. Though his huge birdlike eyes are cloudy, they are not empty.

He greets Yorshka with such reverence that it seems he may fall at her feet. He bows his head over her hands and brushes them with the tip of his beak. 

“Oh, dear lady. I thought you lost when you left this house! You were so long away I feared for your life. Only when the flames began to catch did I have hope. You are a blessed sight indeed! How weary you must be. Come in and rest while you can.”

Yorshka squeezes his hands. “Fear not for me, or thyself. There will be a new world yet. I have seen it.”

But the old corvian is no longer looking at her. His dimmed eyes have found Friede and Vilhelm. 

His sparse feathers bristle. “The Londor witch and her hollow knight, is it? Come at last to see what you’ve done?”

“I come to keep Lady Yorshka safe,” Friede says, praying Vilhelm is not about to loose an acerbic barb. “I mean thee no intrusion. My knight and I shall wait without.”

Yorshka intervenes. “These are my companions,” she says. “For my sake please grant them entry.”

The corvian settler holds Friede’s eyes a moment longer. He clacks his beak in wordless contempt. Then he steps aside to let them all in.

~~~


The tunnel leads to a cliffside bathed in sudden, dusty golden light. It’s blinding compared to the gloom that shrouded the rest of the dreg heap. Too abundant. How can there be such light here when the sun is eclipsed? Gwyndolin thinks at once of Anor Londo and his illusions.

The ledge they are standing on is barely long enough to accommodate the four of them shoulder to shoulder. It does, however, offer an unobstructed view of what lies below: a city. Towering spires and bronze domes gleaming in the haze. Wide walkways and verdant gardens. All sheltered by an encircling mountain wall. A city in a shell, just as Ludleth once described. Gwyndolin knows that this is the place towards which all the buildings in the dreg heap bent. If there is Fire at world’s end as Gael said, it will be here.

Something tugs at the base of Gwyndolin’s memory. He should know this city. Why does he not know this city?

There is only one way down from the cliff: a narrow path scarcely worthy of the word. It is nothing but a flattened strip of rock zigzagging down the cliffside, so steep in places that it might as well be vertical. They shuffle along in single file. No one dares to look down. Gwyndolin walks between Dunstan and Sirris in case he should stumble. The wind tugs at them all the while, carrying the faint scent of ash. At least the air isn’t so heavy here. It isn’t so much like breathing water.

At the bottom of this precarious path is a broad cobblestone road. It curves down to an even longer bridge overgrown with grass and flowers. Clusters of unadorned tombstones lean at intervals along its length.

Gwyndolin bends and touches the cobbles at his feet. They are worn with age and warm with light. Real - or a skilled enough illusion to fool his senses. 

A tattered creature is kneeling prostrate at the top of the walkway. He is robed in rags and a tangled sheet of white hair. What is left of his face has the leathery look of a hollow. He looks up at Dunstan and laughs, a high, delirious sound on the verge of breaking.

“How is it thou’rt here?”

“I walked here,” Dunstan grunts. His nerves and patience are wearing thin.

“I saw thee pass this way long ago. A version of thyself who was not as thou art now. Thou didst not return.”

The old hollow turns sunken eyes on Gwyndolin.

“And thou also I saw, yet not in flesh and blood. In stone and glass only, my unfortunate lord.”

Before anyone can consider these ominous pronouncements, Dunstan growls, “We didn’t come all this way to listen to more riddles.”

He clasps Gwyndolin’s wrist and tugs him away.

As they go, the hollow calls out, “If answers ye seek, seek Filianore’s church! ’Tis the lid on an overgrown privy!”

Filianore. 

The name bursts across Gwyndolin’s memory. He should know it. His mind will not hold on to it. It fills him with vague sorrow.

Dunstan hardly pauses at the base of the curving road. He spares the grass-covered bridge ahead a single glance before stepping onto it.

“Unkindled, take heed,” Gwyndolin says. He senses magic buzzing in the air. This place is not undefended.

“Why? It’s empty.”

“’Tis not!”

No sooner has he said this than there comes a sound like many voices whispering. Three squadrons of ghosts rise from the stones down the length of the bridge. They are made of red light, lightly armored and armed with longbows.

Gwyndolin has just enough time to exchange horrified glances with his companions. Then the arrows begin to fly like thick black rain.

And they are all running, kicking up tufts of grass, throwing themselves behind the first cluster of tombstones and huddling almost in each other’s laps. Three volleys clatter against the stones. Each is more distant than the last, but all are precisely, lethally aimed. 

There is a pause.

Then three more volleys.

“We have to run when they stop,” Amalie says, green eyes wide and eager.

And they won’t have much time. The gaps between firings are not long - likely no longer than it takes the summoner to produce another phalanx. And there is a summoner. Gwyndolin senses that, too: an invisible leash trailing back from the ghosts to their master.

None of this changes the truth. They will have to run. Gwyndolin’s legs are not fit for running.

Damn my frailty!

“On my back. I’ll carry you,” Dunstan says.

“Nay, I will only hinder thee -”

All at once, golden light descends on the bridge - a storm of it, like Aldrich’s arrows. Luminous rain, brighter than the uncanny sunlight all around. It pounds the ghosts to dust in one relentless wave, and they disperse with a low moan.

Gwyndolin peers around the tombstones long enough to see who is perched on a grave further ahead: Eira, jagged spear in hand. And on her back, an angelic wraith with four translucent arms and streaming hair. Miquella.

The lord and her god lift their hands in greeting.

“You took too long to call on us, friends.”

“So we called on ourselves!”

Chapter Text

Eira is full of light.

Although she has shared her mind with Miquella many times, not until this moment has she joined in full communion with him. He wanted to be sure she trusted him - and he trusted himself - to meld in this way. Now his mind is her mind is their mind. They are two halves of a whole, neither one subjugated to the other. A new being, greater than either could be alone.

The robed giant at the end of the bridge summons up another three squadrons of ghostly archers, transparent red like blood turned to light. They lift their bows to the dull gold sky and arrows arc towards Eira and Miquella.

They do not need to speak, hardly even think. Their union is perfect.

Miquella blinks them - no, flickers, hummingbird-quick - between the arrows, raining down his own golden barrage. Then he lifts them both skyward with a casual curve of one arm. Eira calls red lightning to her spear. She can see everything with an eagle’s eye, and she sets her aim without thought. Miquella’s strength coils through her arm as she draws back and hurls the bolt down the bridge. It strikes the giant squarely in the face. He tips backwards off his stone bench and lands with a crash. His body falls to dust, and his ghosts dissolve into red sparks with a last collective moan.

Eira drifts down into the grass that has overgrown the bridge. She lands lightly on her feet, her whole body tingling and warm. She feels she could pull open the sky and drench the world in whatever stars are made of. 

Radahn cannot possibly have felt anything like this. There wasn’t enough left of him by the time his soul was snatched from death and placed in a body not his own. He was a patchwork puppet that should not have been. This now - this is how it is meant to be. A god and a lord, both willing. They stand firm on foundations of trust they built together with patience and time.

And this is only a fraction of Miquella’s power, Eira remembers with a thrill. His current form is just a projection of his will. His body and the Elden Ring it houses cannot leave the Lands Between.

He weighs nothing in this form. He is simply light, and when he touches his lips to Eira’s cheek, his kiss is like sunshine. He withdraws from her consciousness then. She is herself again, small and corporeal. She realizes her face is wet.

Miquella caresses her cheek with one of his ghost hands. “Did I hurt you, consort mine?”

“No,” Eira breathes, voice catching. “That was wonderful.”

She wants more. It’s as if a missing piece she did not know she had has suddenly fallen into place.

Miquella is trembling, nervous and relieved, as he hugs her close. “I am so glad.”

He slips from her back and they walk hand in hand to the cluster of tombstones where Gwyndolin is sheltering with his companions. They all look the worse for wear. Beneath the maroon-and-gold veil she took from gods know where, a healing gash stands out on Amalie’s brow. Dunstan’s shirt is slashed in three places, and one of the cuts is stitched with Radagon’s golden thread. Gwyndolin is very pale and smaller somehow than he should be. Sirris is clenching her jaw so hard in her efforts to hold herself together that Eira fears her bones will break. 

The knight manages a tight smile. “You are divine indeed.” Her voice frays a little. “You came just when we needed you.”

“You’ll have more help soon, I think. Morgott will be right behind us; you know how he is,” Eira says. “After that, there’s nothing stopping Hael and Vere from coming here too. Is everyone all right?”

“Perfectly,” Gwyndolin says. Eira is not convinced.

Dunstan speaks over him. “Lin is sick. It’s the Dark; it’s too strong for him here. Amalie worked a spell to draw it out of him, but it won’t last. He’s been having trouble breathing. Is it his heart, Miquella?”

Miquella’s beautiful face clouds as he looks around. “I was not overly concerned about Lin’s heart when last I saw him in the Lands Between. I advised nothing but watchfulness and caution. But these are not ordinary circumstances. I sense a weight in the air, something sealed, something… Oh, Lin. I should not have let you come here.”

Gwyndolin folds his arms and arches a brow. Exhausted though he clearly is, that gesture is plain. “Think’st thou ’twas in thy power to stop me? No one ever turned me from my course once my mind was set, not even a god newly ascended.”

“You don’t know how to stop. You never have,” Dunstan mutters.

“Oh? And art thou so different?”

Eira inserts herself between them and slips a vial of Erdtree sap into Gwyndolin’s hand - which is far too cold. “You remember this, don’t you? Sip it.”

Gwyndolin looks like he wants to argue, but he uncorks the vial anyway. “Thou findest me always in distress, sweet friend.”

He brings the vial to his lips. His eyes close as liquid Crucible fire flows across his tongue. 

He drinks more than Eira had hoped he needed.

~~~

It’s only in the quiet and relative safety of the corvian settler’s house that Yorshka begins to think. The thread that has drawn her on until now, consuming her with a need to become, is receding a little. The weight of certain thoughts is beginning to settle on her shoulders in full.

The father she never knew is dead. She will never feel his touch or hear her name in his voice.

She claimed from the frozen lake the weapon that will bring down the final curtain on Ariandel and allow fire to swallow her home. It was a harsh home, yes, but it was where her mother rocked her to sleep, wrapped in blankets with corvian stories woven into them. Her last memories of Priscilla live here.

Yorshka is the guardian of the new world.

She will have to leave Gwyndolin.

She cannot tell her brother any of this, because he is off somewhere dangerous he does not want her to go.

Her only companions now are two former members of the Sable Church, both of whom tried to kill people she loves.

Yorshka does not want to think these things. Not yet. She does not know what will happen if she lets herself think and feel all of it. She cannot break. When she is home, awaiting the completion of the new world - then she can put her face in her pillows and scream or cry or shake apart, put herself back together and make herself ready. But not until then.

Instead, she sips from the bowl of stew the old settler pressed on her and thinks about her companions. The quiet is wearing on their nerves as much as on hers. Friede is sitting against one wall looking down at her hands, which are trembling. She has been fighting so hard of late. Dunnel, the demons, Ariandel itself, fire everywhere with no way to escape, and now this decaying settlement. It’s all caught up with her.

Vilhelm is leaning on the wall a polite distance from his lady. His left palm rests against the stones, fingers tapping one at a time - one, two, three, four, five, again and again. A meditation to anchor himself in reality and keep from going hollow? Or to keep from thinking about things that frighten him? Yorshka knows how that feels, at least a little.

She knows why Vilhelm is angry with her too. It’s not really because of the fire at all. It’s because Yorshka is taking his lady away, the person who gave him place and purpose. Friede is very important to Vilhelm. He never says so, but Yorshka can see it. She dares not imagine how her heart would break if someone took Gwyndolin away from her, even it was for his own good, even if it was what he wanted.

After a while, Friede gestures for Vilhelm to sit down beside her. She lays her head on his shoulder, and he goes absolutely still. Yorshka hears a tiny catch in his breathing. It’s plain that Friede has never done this before.

The old corvian does not offer food to the lady and her knight. It’s only for Yorshka’s sake that he let the “Londor witch” into his house at all. He just watches their quiet dramas unfold, unreadable. The crow on his shoulder watches too.

“This young lady,” he says at last, with a nod to the crow, “assures me you are not entirely heartless, Vilhelm of Londor. You will forgive me if I find it difficult to believe that myself.” There is no real courtesy in that statement.

“Does she condemn me for what I have become?” Vilhelm matches the settler’s coldness drop for drop.

“That is for Roslein to say, not I. I was a storyteller once, a medium for spirits. I give the dead the means to speak; I do not place my words in their mouths. Nor will I compel you to hear your friend.”

“How gracious.”

“It is for her sake, you understand, not yours. The dead are sacred, and young Roslein seems a kind sort. If she is to speak to you, I would prefer she not waste her words on unwilling ears.”

“She is concerned for my soul?” Vilhelm tries to sneer, but his voice doesn’t quite get there. It’s too tired and…something else, something hidden.

“She has every reason to be,” the corvian rejoins. “Your choice of lady and the deeds you have done in her name… I need not say what I think of that. And you are quite hollow besides. How is it you’ve kept hold of your mind all these years?”

The old corvian looks between Vilhelm and Friede with her head on his shoulder.

“Well, perhaps the answer is before my eyes. Why are you hollow, by the by? Your lady is not.”

“Hollowing is the natural state of man,” Vilhelm says, reflexive. “Humanity is a state of excess, a deceit of the gods. Londor rejects -”

“I did not ask for your Londor doctrine. I asked you why you choose to remain hollow.”

“That is my own affair.”

“Is it a sort of penance, I wonder? Have you something to mourn? Something to regret?”

“You may find you have your own regrets, should you pry further.”

Friede stirs and puts her hand on Vilhelm’s arm. “No threats. We are guests in this house, and that alone is more than we deserve.”

Vilhelm lapses into discontented silence. The tension between him and the old corvian lingers in the air like lowering storm clouds. 

“Perhaps ‘twould do thee good to hear Roslein speak,” Friede says after a while.

“It might give thee peace,” Yorshka ventures.

“What do you know of carrying ghosts?” Vilhelm’s sunken eyes betray no expression, but his voice holds contempt and barely concealed hurt. An old wound reopened when he heard the name of the spirit in the crow’s body.

Friede looks at him sharply. “That is enough.”

Yorshka refuses to be deterred. She wants to begin her guardianship of the new world by offering aid to this man who is set in his ways more bitterly than anyone she has ever known. If she can reach Vilhelm, that will tell her what she is capable of. It will prepare her for the future. Surely no one else who might come to her haven will be so difficult to touch.

She overheard the tale Vilhelm told Friede when they both thought she was asleep. The revolt he led as a peasant boy, the friends who joined him and paid with their lives. Yorshka is acquainted with that sort of guilt.

Without preamble, she lets her story unwind.

“I once trusted a traitor called Sulyvahn. Nightmares haunted my dear brother, you see, and I thought Sulyvahn might know some art that could ease him. He was always thirsty when he woke from his dreams. I told the traitor so, and Sulyvahn poisoned my brother’s bedside water pitcher. When my brother sickened, his enemies gave him to Aldrich the Devourer. He did not die, but he was tortured and nigh eaten ere a selfless warrior set him free. The beast ate the snakes that helped him to walk. I recall my foolishness each time I look upon my brother and see his serpents gone. So I know what it is, sir, to bring harm to those I sought to help.”

For once, Vilhelm has no caustic rejoinder for her. He regards her for a long time. The whole cottage is silent and still. Then softly he says, “You blame yourself.”

He isn’t asking a question. He isn’t really talking to Yorshka, either.

“I did for a time,” Yorshka says. “I believe I always will, in part.” 

She has diminished that part of her with time and effort, but it is still there, a dark little thorn in her heart. It pricks her even now. It tells her she has nothing of value to offer, that she only ever makes trouble for those she loves. And isn’t she making the same mistake now that she made with Sulyvahn? Baring her heart to these people who did violence to her family, trusting them not to put a knife in her?

Maybe she is wrong. But she doesn’t think so. Friede was there in her vision of the new world. Yorshka does not know why Vilhelm wasn’t there too. Maybe he isn’t ready. Maybe a gentle world is not what he needs, at least not as his permanent residence.

Whatever the case, he won’t be able to rest anywhere until he hears what the crow has to say.

“Roslein may ease thee,” Yorshka says again.

“Or wound me further.” Vilhelm is already drawing back behind his walls. The small opening he gave Yorshka a moment ago is all she is going to get for now.

“Could she ever wound thee more sorely than thou art now?” Yorshka asks. “I find the worst is more endurable than not knowing at all.”

“You know -” He stops himself with a shake of his head. “Let me be, girl.”

He rests his head against the wall of the cottage and closes his hollow eyes. Friede gives him a final searching look, then gets up and steps outside. Yorshka wants to follow her, but she restrains herself. She is learning when to intervene and when to withdraw. Perhaps Friede wants to grapple with her guilt alone.

Yorshka goes to the kitchen counter and puts her empty stew bowl there. The corvian settler stands beside her, looking through his door at the landscape of death beyond.

“Why did you bring those people here?” he asks.

Yorshka does not need to think about that. “I believe they are not yet lost.”

“You are gentle of heart, and I fear your kindness misleads you. For Friede I concede there may yet be a chance, if she has indeed sworn herself to your protection. But her knight is a hard man, cold as our snows. I cannot abide the manner in which he speaks to you.”

“’Tis no trouble to me.” Vilhelm’s coldness is different from Sulyvahn’s. It isn’t malice for malice’s sake; it’s malice as a defense against a life falling apart. “I saw Lady Friede in my vision of the new world. Sir Vilhelm will follow her there, I hope, if only because he knoweth naught else.”

The old corvian takes Yorshka’s hands. The stubs of feathers on his fingers rasp softly against her skin. He looks into her eyes, almost pleading. “What else do you see in the new world? What was it like?”

Yorshka calls her vision to mind. It isn’t hazy like a dream or a memory, but rather like looking through a window at something the glass will not yet let her touch. “’Twas much like Ariandel, but…there was light and softness. Frost glittered in the trees. Stars shone above and in the mirror lakes below. Flowers softly glowed. I saw my mark upon that place, beyond any doubt.”

All at once, fear grips her. She cannot do this. She will break this precious thing entrusted to her like she almost broke Gwyndolin’s life. She wants someone to hold her, someone she knows and trusts, someone who isn’t afraid. Her mother. She wants her mother.

Yorshka lets her knees buckle. She and the corvian sink to the floor together, still hand in hand.

“I am afeared. ’Tis too much. I am not made for great things.”

The corvian glances outside at the greatwolf, pacing below with Priscilla’s scythe in its jaws. He runs his thumb over Yorshka’s knuckles and says with all the faith in the world, “Yes, my lady, you are.”

~~~

After some debate, they decide to split into three groups. Sirris does not like this, but she sees the necessity of it. Filianore’s church might be anywhere in this maze of towers and corridors. Six people is too large a group to move efficiently through the city. With their summoning rings, they can call on each other in an instant if need be.

Sirris and Amalie walk the city’s outer paths together, scouting balconies and arcades. It’s a grand place, as ornate as Irithyll or Anor Londo. The stonework is skillful and neat. And yet it is all overgrown with grass, as if no one has tended this place in some time.

The effects of Dark run wild aren’t so obvious here as they were outside the city, but they are leaking out here too. More than once a skeleton smoking with humanity clatters up the side of a balcony or drops from an overhang. Sirris makes a habit of glancing at the edges she passes and stomping on anything that might be skeleton fingers. 

There are hollows too, hollows more shrunken than any Sirris has ever seen. Some of them wear ragged robes of clerical blue and cower beneath the sealing lids on their backs when attacked. Others hurl what must once have been lightning. It has gone white now, drained of color.

The strangest thing is the light. There is too much of it to be natural, and it’s too golden. Sirris is not as skilled in illusions as her captain, so she cannot determine if that is indeed what the light is. Still, she is sure it is artificial in some way. If not an illusion, then what?

Her gaze falls on the desert pyromancer’s hood Amalie is still wearing.

If not an illusion...then a veil?

Closer. But not quite right.

They talk as they go, to keep their minds off the looming sense of wrongness all around:

“So you see? The captain doesn’t hate you.”

“He said nothing of my abandoning Irithyll during the coup.”

“Probably because he already guessed what happened and forgave you long ago. You heard him, ma’am: he just wants you to be -”

“Ah, two more by Fire forsaken.”

Amalie yelps and lifts her talisman. The source of that soft, lilting voice is an insectile creature hidden in a niche on their left. Its back legs are bent for jumping, like a locust’s. Beneath sparse white hair, its wizened face is bizarrely human.

Sirris grips Amalie’s arm and forces it down. “Restraint. Those who speak before they strike may not be enemies.”

The locust goes blithely on. “Fear not the dark, my friends. You come late. The feast is all but ended, for our kind and all the world.”

“What are you on about?” Amalie demands, still wary. “Where is Filianore’s church?”

“I speak of a poor girl who slew her own kin, yet still her ghosts would not leave her. Neither moon nor sunless sky afforded her the comfort she sought. Only the Abyss embraced her.”

A chill runs through Sirris’s body from her toes to her lips. She goes almost numb. The locust is talking about her - a future Sirris who, despite her journey with Amalie and her final confrontation with Hodrick in the Pit of Hollows, could not learn to be anything but alone. Embraced by the Abyss… Merciful gods, is that how Sirris’s life is going to end? 

Or has the locust not accounted for Amalie? Perhaps Sirris’s budding love for her is a change to the chain of events on which the locust based its pronouncements, too recent to be included. They are altering the future even as they journey into it.

Amalie grips Sirris’s cold hand. “Don’t listen to it. It isn’t going to happen like that.” Then to the locust: “If you know so much, tell us about Filianore.”

The locust chuckles softly. “Let me speak instead of an ill-omened child, a moon born to the sun. He walked beside the Dark a while, until it drowned the little flame inside him. His true companion sought to give him air. Once done, he could not put back that which he had taken. And so the feast began.”

~~~

The old settler goes outside to talk with Friede after a while. Yorshka hears bits of their conversation over the crackling flames. 

“I was afeared. ‘Twas my sincere belief that to burn Ariandel would bring more pain than to let it rot. Lady Yorshka and her companions did what I could not. I will not presume to ask thy forgiveness.”

“I do not require your guilt. I need to know that you are changed.”

“A phantom assailed us on the bridge of Priscilla’s tower - a pyromancer, the mad shade of Lady Yorshka’s father. I fought him in her defense. Of late I aided her brother Gwyndolin and his companions in a battle with three demons of Izalith.”

“Surely there was a great deal of fire. Is that not your direst fear?”

“Aye, it is.”

“Hm. Most curious. What so altered your heart?”

“’Tis Lady Yorshka’s belief that I may yet be more than I was. I wish to know if she is right.”

I am, Yorshka thinks, and drifts off into a doze.

Some time later, Vilhelm jerks himself out of a dream, clawing and slapping at himself and panting for breath. It’s so vivid that Yorshka catches a secondhand glimpse of what he has been seeing: flies, his friends, his friends becoming flies. His past and present are tangled in his mind. With the foundations of his life broken, his defenses are at last unraveling.

Yorshka’s instincts compel her to go to him, but she resists. She does not even look directly at him until she feels his eyes on her. I will let thee come to me when thou’rt ready.

“What did you do to me, girl?” Vilhelm asks her. His voice is strange: low and grating as always, but for the first time it’s unsteady too.

The crow flutters down from the corvian’s shoulder and lands in front of Vilhelm. He extends a hand to it, and it nibbles gently at his fingers. “You all right, love?” the bird says in its mimicked voice.

Friede has the final word. “Sir, please. If thou remain’st as thou art, I fear thou shalt lose thyself ere long.” 

Vilhelm sweeps them with his gaze, as if he wants to say “Damn you all” but can’t quite muster the venom. He lingers longest on Yorshka. 

“All right, Ros,” he says at last. “What do you want?”

The crow lands on Yorshka’s shoulder and runs its break through strands of her hair.

“Roslein will find it easiest to speak through a young lady such as herself,” the corvian settler explains. “She will not hurt you, Lady Yorshka, but you may find it unsettling to allow another soul into your body. Will you permit it?”

Yorshka nods. Many things frighten her, but not the dead. The people of Ariamis taught her not to fear spirits. They are simply another form of existence.

The corvian moves beside her, placing one fingertip on her brow and another on the crow’s beak. “Speak, little rose.”

At once Yorshka feels the ghost enter her body. Her mind fills with a gentle presence and the musty smells of hay and livestock. She has become a conduit.

Don’t be afraid, Roslein tells her. She feels a pressure in her palm, a hand that isn’t there.

Then her mouth opens, and the voice that emerges isn’t her own, nor are the words. This is a younger voice with a rougher accent, the speech of an unschooled peasant girl.

“You’ve gotten yourself into a right mess, haven’t you, Vil? Hollow as an empty barrel. What did you do that for? You can’t really believe all that Londor rubbish. You never believed in anything but yourself and us who knew you. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d say you were paying for…”

That is all Yorshka hears before her consciousness sinks beneath Roslein’s. She kneels without commanding her knees to bend. Vilhelm watches her, so still he might be stone. She can’t even see him clearly. Her eyes are full of visions that aren’t hers. 

A childhood Vilhelm, black-haired with keen blue eyes, inclines his head to her - to Roslein - as she passes. He never shouts to her like the other boys. He’s always quiet and respectful, like they’re going to a ball rather than the fields. It makes Roslein feel like a proper gentlewoman. Her work scythe seems a little lighter in her hands, and she goes to the fields humming to herself. The lord’s overseer isn’t about just now, so she can make a bit of music. “Roses of May” is the song she’s chosen, a sweet little dance. She’s decided it’s her song because she’s named for a rose. Not even her lord can take it from her.

“…is that boy still here?” Roslein is saying when Yorshka comes back to herself for a moment.

Vilhelm is still motionless. He takes a breath that catches just enough to notice. “No.”

It isn’t mocking or cruel, just true.

Roslein sighs, a gust of cool air across Yorshka’s insides. “No, I can see that.”

“You waste your time. I do not need what you offer.”

“You won’t scare me off that easy. You won’t scare her off that easy either.”

Yorshka loses her awareness again. When she returns to her own mind at last, Roslein is withdrawing. 

“...want you to be hollow? What use is... ...weren’t like this when... ...for so long you’ve... ...how to live.”

And she is gone. The crow flaps out the cottage door. Yorshka’s vision goes dark, and she feels suddenly cold. She is barely aware of her body pitching forward or Friede catching her before she can fall into Vilhelm’s lap. 

“Your Roslein has more sense than you do,” the old corvian says.

There is a long, unsteady sigh. Then Vilhelm resumes drumming his fingers on the floor. Faster than before.

~~~

As usual, it doesn’t take Eira long to find a strong foe. She and Miquella are searching the city’s courtyards when they come to one that is particularly open and overgrown with grass and pale flowers. The nearby tower is topped with a finial found everywhere in the city: a simple circle.

“A curious choice of adornment, is it not?” Miquella remarks. Of course he noticed the finials; he has always had an interest in architecture. “What do you think it signifies?”

“A wreath?” Eira guesses. “That could be it; there are so many growing things here. Or a crown?”

At that moment a knight steps into the courtyard to meet her. A stony shield shaped like a dragon’s head rests heavily in one hand, and in the other a greatsword scrapes along the ground. It is a roughly hewn thing, caked with a dried tarry substance. The knight’s armor is black with a hood that conceals any hint of the figure within, and on its chest is a hole, darker than black and ringed in white. 

An empty circle, like the finials.

Before Eira can connect these two things, the knight advances on her. Black and silver fire streams from the dragon-headed shield - blackflame.

Miquella vaults onto Eira’s back at once and blinks them both out of reach of the flames. Their thoughts come faster than the knight can move:

This one might prove to be a nuisance. Shall I work a charm?

You said you weren’t going to do that anymore. To anyone.

Aye, but I wish to keep you safe.

Just be with me. I can manage.

The knight swings, a hard overhead blow meant to break Eira in two. Blackflame ripples up and down the blade. Miquella blinks once more and launches Eira into the air. She plunges down with spear crackling and drives it into the hole in the knight’s chest.

Dark explodes outward. It is thicker and heavier than smoke, almost like water. Within that water are myriad overlapping voices, all speaking hunger. Eira cannot see or breathe. In a moment of blind necessity, she grips the gravel stone seal in her left hand and splits open the sky. Red lightning roars down, ripping the darkness apart. Then Miquella is on her back again, golden light blooming through the rest of the dark.

Eira thrusts her spear up and into the knight’s hooded face. The bolt meets something viscous instead of flesh. The knight spasms and crumples to the ground, dark pooling out of the empty armor. If there ever was a person inside, the body is long gone.

Eira pushes sweat-damp hair out of her eyes, panting. “What do you make of that?”

Miquella lifts off her and kneels beside the armor. “Lin once spoke to us of the Darksign, the gods’ ringed seal of fire upon Dark.”

“But it can’t be that. You saw what happened when I hit it. It was making the Dark stronger, not sealing it away.”

“I suspect it was a seal when first it was placed upon this person. The ring would have been fire-red or orange. Something has altered it since then, reversed its original purpose. Perhaps the change occurred upon the ascension of the Lord of Hollows, of whom Dunstan spoke.”

Eira’s gaze drifts up to the circular finial on the nearest spire. She thinks, too, of the curved rock wall that surrounds this city.

Miquella hears her thought before she utters it. “Aye, ’tis no coincidence. Seals upon seals. This very city is a lock, and it has been failing for some time.”

“So who has the key?”

Even as Eira asks this, she guesses the answer. Filianore’s is the only name she has, after all. She has learned that when one name rings clear amidst a mess of riddles, it is often worth pursuing.

~~~


The hulking warriors with paired greatswords and heads made of darkness are here too. Dunstan is not pleased to see them again. This time they are all patrolling a grand staircase beneath a low bridge, however. That gives Gwyndolin the perfect vantage from which to open fire on their heads. 

Magic still dizzies him despite Amalie’s intervention, so he relies on his bow. Fortunately, there has never been anything wrong with Gwyndolin’s arms. He has already put four arrows into the nearest warrior’s head by the time it lumbers up the stairs to him. He blinks away down his grass-grown bridge and lands a final arrow. It sends the warrior toppling over and clattering down the staircase.


Shuddering with a sudden chill, Gwyndolin presses himself flat to the grass and waits for the world to stop spinning. Meanwhile Dunstan charges up to the bridge and throws himself onto the head of one of the two remaining warriors below. Gwyndolin pushes himself up and fires on the third just as it begins to swing at Dunstan. It reels back with an arrow in its smoking black head. Dunstan hurls himself bodily at it and knocks it to the ground. Kneeling on the warrior’s rotund torso, he sinks his claymore into its head.

Gwyndolin watches this with some dismay. He has never seen Dunstan fight with such aggression, such wild and obvious desperation. He knows the Unkindled is frightened. He is too. Neither of them wants to think about why Dunstan may have become Lord of Hollows. But throwing themselves at enemies like this will -

“All right?”

Dunstan is back on the bridge, tugging Gwyndolin gently to his feet.

Gwyndolin nods, though they both know he isn’t all right.

Dunstan takes his arm and leads him to a pair of double doors atop the staircase. Gwyndolin is not surprised to see that they are carved with Silver Knights standing at attention. He and his siblings suspected from the start that this city they cannot remember might have something to do with Gwyn. Here is a sign that they were right.

Dunstan is just about to tug on the doors when a woman’s low voice comes muffled from within:

“Speak thou the name of thy god.”

Dunstan glances sidelong at Gwyndolin. “I don’t have a god. I’m here with Gwyndolin of Irithyll, as his friend.”

“Thy voice is familiar to me. Irithyll, sayest thou? Not Anor Londo? But Lord Gwyndolin is… Is this a miracle or a deceit?”

She is silent for a long time. Gwyndolin folds his arms and tries not to shiver with foreboding.

“Very well,” the woman says. “I accept your coming as a gift. If ye be kin and friend to the gods, then surely ye know the terror of the Dark.”

Dunstan shifts uneasily. “It’s all right when it ain’t running wild. Do you know what’s happening outside these doors? Something’s…gone wrong.”

“Aye, ’tis so. Fire waneth, and my lady lieth by the Dark, all for the sake of man.”

“Wane” is putting it lightly indeed. It occurs to Gwyndolin that this woman may have been shut in this room, in this city, for a very long time. She may not be aware - particularly not if the light is as much a deception as Gwyndolin thinks - that the Lord of Hollows has ended the world.

“Thy lady is Filianore?” Gwyndolin asks.

“Is that your voice, my good lord?” She must believe Gwyndolin is who Dunstan claims he is, because she has shifted from thou to the reverential you. “Aye, I am a knight of Princess Filianore. My name is Shira. You are kind to speak to a captive such as I. Might I presume to offer you counsel? Wake not the princess from her rest. ’Tis best for us all that she sleep, however it may break your heart.”

Something stirs in the depths of Gwyndolin’s mind. It hits a wall and falls back beneath the surface again.

What is happening to him?

“Break mine heart, Knight Shira?” he says, deliberately calm. “Why should it? The Princess Filianore is not known to me.”

There is a long, long pause. Gwyndolin finds himself gripping Dunstan’s arm.

“Pardon, my lord,” Shira says at last. “Of course she is not. That too is for the best.”

Chapter Text

At the heart of many great cities lies rot. Eira’s journeys have taught her that. In Leyndell it was the shunning grounds, in Elphael the scarlet swamp and the missing cocoon, and in Enir-Ilim, the divine gate made of corpses. 

This city is no different. As Eira and Miquella travel deeper into the labyrinth, the stone gives way to grass. The verdure grows increasingly rotten until it dissolves into black murk that squishes under Eira’s boots. When that happens, Eira tells Miquella to get on her back again. She knows he is invulnerable as a projection, but still she does not want him touching that slime.

Then they emerge from an alleyway and the world is a swamp. Nothing but tarry liquid exhaling gouts of blackflame here and there. Pale insectile heads peer above the water. In the distance looms the towering figure of another robed giant, like a walking tree.

Miquella shivers and hugs Eira closer. “How like the depths of Elphael it is.”

“As long as no one here spits pest threads, we’ll manage.” Eira is trying to be casual, but Miquella’s unease is jangling through her and setting her own nerves on edge. 

“Go no further, consort mine. I fear the water will harm you.” It’s almost a plea. Eira cannot recall when last she heard her god so shaken.

“Do you sense something in it?”

“I trust you recall the Aldrich Plague. Dark responds eagerly to potent memories and emotions, Lin told us then. I believe I sense that now. It is…reaching for me. Come, let us be away. Filianore’s church is not here.”

Miquella is right enough about that. None of the half-sunken chunks of masonry littering the swamp resemble a church. If ever they did, they are long destroyed. Eira doesn’t fancy crossing the swamp any more than Miquella does, especially not if it will be fruitless. 

She is just about to turn around when she catches sight of another huge figure on the swamp’s far shore. It is armored from head to foot, and its helm might be shaped like a roaring lion. It carries a long-handled greataxe in one hand and a round shield solid as a turtle shell in the other. It is much bigger than any of the other knights Eira has seen in the city, and utterly black. Is it made of Dark or just coated in it? Then she begins to hear faint hissing whispers coming from the figure’s direction, and she thinks she knows the answer.

Miquella tugs at Eira’s shoulders with his ghostly hands. “Let us go, please.”

“It’s all right. I’m sure it’s just full of humanity, like all the others.”

Before Miquella can answer, one of the overlarge insects sunk in the swamp rises up on shimmering wings. It clutches a slender blade of blue light in one of its segmented limbs.

“Fear the Dark, defiler of souls. It sees your heart,” the creature intones in a bizarrely soft voice.

It turns and tosses its blade at the feet of the armored construct. The shadow whirls with a great splashing and regards Miquella. Eira knows it is looking at him even though it has no visible face. “Defiler of souls” could only be an insult meant for him.

The shadow strides towards them, and as it moves, it changes. Its axe and shield shift into two curved greatswords. Its armor assumes a stockier profile. Horns sprout on its arms. Darkness streams down its back to form a cape and bushy hair caught in a loose braid. The shadow is mirroring Miquella’s memories and growing strong, just like Gwyndolin’s rogue Aldrich illusions. 

Miquella recognizes the figure a heartbeat before Eira does. “No.” The word is a caught breath.

Radahn’s silhouette crosses its swords over its chest in salute - mirroring Eira’s memories too now. She lifts her spear in return. There is nothing of the real Radahn in this construct, but she will honor him nonetheless.

Miquella is shuddering violently on Eira’s back. “I…cannot. Forgive me.”

“You can. It’s not real.”

“It was!”

“It was, and I put an end to it. I gave Radahn rest. It’s nothing but your own mind bringing him back.”

“Forgive me,” Miquella begs again, and he is gone. In his place is a softer, cooler presence, like dew rather than sunlight. The glow behind Eira turns purple. She does not need to see the woman on her back to know what she must look like. Wild pale hair streaming like vines, violet at the ends. Crowned not with a circlet of light, but with a single purple bloom.

Trina bends her head and kisses Eira’s cheek. Calm floods through her, and love, so much love it makes her chest ache.

“Back to sleep now,” Trina tells the shadow-Radahn. “You should not be waking.” 

She lifts her arm and strews a pale mist across the dark water. The construct takes no notice at first. It slashes at Eira, first its left sword, then its right. Eira backsteps away from both and keeps retreating. She has seen this before and knows what is coming. Without warning, the construct lunges at her with a vicious cross-slash. She scrambles back another few steps just in time to avoid it. Cold wind rips across her chest as the blades pass. The assault seems slower than Eira remembers - Trina’s mist has done its work.

If the Aldrich plague was any indication, this sort of shadow will not be durable. It has little substance and cannot hold its form against assault for long. They just need to hit it hard and fast.

Trina seems to know that too. She blinks them both away from the construct’s next slash, which explodes into blackflame. She lifts Eira up to the height of the construct’s head and conjures a slender silver bow. Eira follows her lead. Trina’s arrow strikes the shadow full in the face at the same time as the red lightning hurled from Eira's spear.

The shadow staggers backwards. It is so quiet, far more so than any creature of flesh and bone. So wrong. 

Then it bends its knees and leaps into the air and vanishes.

Trina turns her thought inward. Come back, beloved. You must do this.

And Miquella’s presence blossoms back into existence. His pain courses through Eira like fire in her blood, but he is back, lifting them skyward to meet the shadow. The construct comes careening towards them in a ball of blackflame. Miquella blinks straight towards it, faster than he has ever done before. With his golden light blazing around her, Eira feels that she has become a thundercloud like Placidusax. In the blink of an eye allotted to her, she electrifies her spear. 

They crash into the shadow, burning gold and crackling red. They fall back to earth in a rush of icy darkness that leaves Eira’s skin clammy. Miquella sets her ever so gently on her feet. The construct lands on its back with a great splash, Dark bleeding away from it.

Miquella slips off Eira and kneels on the shadow. His knees pass through it, turning from gold to black. The shadow shifts beneath him. All at once, it is not Radahn but Miquella himself. The shadow-god’s hair spreads like ink through the swamp waters. It reaches up to beckon, to charm, Let us go together.

Miquella sinks his hands into the shadow’s chest. Golden light explodes from his fingers. The construct shatters into a hail of dark droplets and smoke.

Eira lets herself breathe again.

Miquella kneels there a while, panting and shivering. Eira does not touch him yet. He will tell her when he is ready.

“I fled,” he says at last, very small.

“You came back.”


Miquella lifts onto Eira’s back and tucks his arms around her. He presses himself so close it’s as if he wants to dissolve into her. Eira wants that, too. She wants to cradle him within her and protect him from the things that hurt him - but she cannot. He will never grow that way. Trina was right to call him back to face this ghost. 

Eira lets him hold her in silence. Miquella rests his cheek against hers until he stops trembling. This is their tactile language, more reassuring than any words.

At last Miquella takes a long, unsteady breath and says, “Then it is as we thought. Dark has grown strong within this city. The seal is failing. The lock is broken.”

With sudden, inexplicable dread, Eira wonders what this implies about whoever may be holding the key.

~~~

Vilhelm is slipping.

“Speak to me, sir.”

No, speech is too much. Too complicated. Too many thoughts and muscles to unify and work in conjunction. Just his fingertips now, tapping on the rough floorboards, one, two, three, four, five. The flames’ warmth nearby. This is Ariandel, this is where he is. He is not fully hollow yet and will not go hollow. She will call him back, as she always has. She will be the purpose that holds him steady.

But Lady Elfriede is not herself anymore. She is someone else. She follows the crossbreed dragon girl now.

Well, is that so terrible? He could follow her too, and rest. Yes, rest. How long since he truly rested?

His drumming fingertips slow, then quicken again -

Not rest, not yet. It’s dangerous to rest when one is so near to hollowing; every Undead knows that. Keep fighting lest you stagnate.

Rot again, always rot. In Ariandel, inside himself. Strange that it keeps happening that way.

“Did Roslein tell it true? Thou remain’st hollow as penance for the children who died beside thee?”

Why is Vilhelm still hollow? He doesn’t know himself. He made that choice so long ago that he can no longer separate the tangled threads of causality, duty and doctrine and debt. He doesn’t want to try.

“If ’tis so, then release thyself. Of all the blood on thine hands, that of thy companions is not thine to bear. Hollowing can be undone, if it be thy will. Hast thou a will still?”

His lady grips his hand hard enough to hurt. Not to be unkind, but to jerk him back to himself. Vilhelm’s eyes fix on hers: red-brown turned purple in the firelight, as always. Those eyes are still the same even if their owner is not. Let that be his anchor. Even that small touch of familiarity will keep him grounded for a little while. He’s made do with less.

Ros is correct about one thing, though: Vilhelm is too close to the edge. All these ordeals and changes of late have destabilized him. He will have to do something about that before he loses himself and has to be put down. He’s no use to Lady Elfriede as a mad hollow.

There. His thoughts are sounding like his own again.

Vilhelm returns Friede’s grip. Her pulse beats beneath his hand, and he times the drumming of his fingers to match it. 

“Your will is mine, my lady.”


For survival’s sake, that is how it must be. The place to which Lady Elfriede is leading him need not be his final home. It just needs to keep him sane until he finds his feet again.

And if he must endure the dragon girl’s incessant attempts to soften his heart, so be it.

She is not who Vilhelm first judged her to be, he must admit.

And her tale of her role in the Darkmoon’s poisoning… Well, that struck a chord in him too familiar to deny.

~~~

Shira, Gwyndolin discovers, is not easy to interrogate. 

He sits against her doors for some time, attempting every question he can think of. Why is she trapped in that room? Is she trapped at all? Why ought he not to disturb Filianore’s slumber? Why is the princess sleeping? Why is it for the best that Gwyndolin does not know her? To all these questions Shira gives vague answers, variations on the theme of duty. She often repeats what sounds like her creed as a knight of Filianore: “As the fire waneth doth she lie by the dark, all for the sake of man.” She refers to herself once as the daughter of a duke, which makes Gwyndolin wonder why a lady of noble birth is locked in a room at the end of the world.

He is quite sure Shira is keeping something from him on purpose.

Only once does Shira deviate from her stock phrases: when Gwyndolin asks her what Filianore is like. Even then, all she will say is, “My lady is gentle of heart, skilled and subtle in magic.”

This does not spur Gwyndolin’s memory as he had hoped. It does, however, tell him something about the city’s strange sunlight. He does not think it is an illusion in the same way his own sun was. Even with his trained eye, he can find no cracks or ripples in it, and no illusionist is as perfect as that. Gwyndolin remains certain there is some form of artifice in it, however. Since he entered the city, the light has not changed in any way that would indicate the passage of time. If Filianore is a skilled magician as Shira says, that could be her doing. She has done passing fine work if so: large-scale, enduring, convincing.

But what exactly has she done, and why?

At the end of this one-sided exchange, Shira asks something of her own: “Have ye seen the great dark dragon who inhabiteth this city? Midir is his name, descendant of archdragons. He once strove against Dark as the princess’s true defender, but he was by Dark consumed. I would have you put him to rest while he may yet fall with some dignity, ere he is utterly lost and his vows forgotten.”

At this, Dunstan, whose exasperation has been growing steadily, at last explodes. “Lin is not going to fight a dragon! He’s ill enough as it is.”

“Speak not on my behalf,” Gwyndolin protests, indignant.

“Then perhaps thou wouldst do so alone,” Shira says to Dunstan, her voice gone cold, “thou who art bold enough to address a god with such familiarity.”


“I told you, he’s not my god, and I’m not doing your dirty work for you.”

“But if the dragon is a peril to Filianore, perhaps we ought -” Gwyndolin begins.

Dunstan tugs on his arm. “We’ve wasted enough time here.”

Maybe so. All the same, Gwyndolin touches his summoning ring and sends out a silent appeal: We may soon face a dragon, ancient and mighty. Come ye to me.

Meanwhile, Dunstan is already walking down the stairs. He stops only a moment when Shira calls out, “I know thy voice, human. How is it I know thy voice?”

~~~

Friede is outside again. She has been going in and out of the house for some time now, back and forth between the world she broke and the knight who is breaking. Yorshka has watched her agitation mount each time she retraces her steps. Now at last blackflame begins to smolder in Friede’s left hand. She clenches her fist so tight upon it that Yorshka winces at the sight.

Friede’s gaze sweeps the blood-filled moat, the fungal growths creeping up the walls, and the flames embracing it all. There is a wild, furious light in her eyes. Yorshka imagines Miquella must have looked much the same way when he burned his rotted Haligtree. If he had been here, could he have swayed Friede’s mind, given her a vital push as he did for Gwyndolin?

Together they watch a lone corvian knight stagger on its gangly legs. It leans on its rapier a moment, then lies down amidst the flames. Its threat has passed. Yorshka forces herself to watch it fall, so she will have no delusions about what she has set in motion here. Real change is not soft and easy like in the fairy stories she loves. She wants to remember that, wants to go forward with her eyes open.

“Too late,” Friede murmurs, arms wrapped tight around herself. “How is it I did not see… Nay, I know why. I did not wish to see, lest the sight give me cause for doubt.”

“My brother extinguished the First Flame at a late hour indeed, only after many souls burned to preserve it,” Yorshka says. “He could not restore them. He could but make a kinder and fairer world for those who followed after.”

Very slowly, Friede unclenches her hands. She lifts them from her arms one finger, one joint, at a time. Second by second, she empties her lungs and fills them again.

“Let this be burned upon my memory.”

“What did Roslein say? I did not hear it all,” Yorshka says, because she needs a change of subject as much as Friede does. The things she has seen in Ariandel will haunt her too. Too much pain for her soft heart.

“’Tis not for me to tell thee. I will say only that she wisheth my knight to recover himself ere he is gone beyond recall. I believe she spoke not of his hollowing alone.”

Yorshka is inclined to agree. Hollowing is only one of Vilhelm’s troubles. The other is the solid wall he has erected around himself, sealing in the violence to which he has become so accustomed. That wall will not be easily breached, Yorshka knows. The battle that forced Friede out of her former life was more brutal than Yorshka dares recall, and Vilhelm is just as set in his ways as his lady was, if not more so. He survived the fly pit, yet still he opposes the new painted world with all his heart.

At least, that is what he wants everyone to think. Himself most of all.

Before she leaves this world, Yorshka will take up her mother’s scythe and sever Ariandel’s last threads. She is determined that both Friede and Vilhelm will leave with her when she does.

She holds a vision in her mind - not given to her atop Priscilla’s tower, but her own. Two guardians, one on each side of her, wreathed in blackflame.

~~~

Yorshka stands with her head bowed against the corvian settler’s for a long time before leaving the house. Friede watches something silent pass between them, reassurance or farewell. The old corvian brushes his thumbs over Yorshka’s knuckles.

“Come with me, wilt thou?” the girl says, plaintive. 

For the first time it strikes Friede that Yorshka may not be as sure of herself as she appears. She is stepping into an unknown new world where she will be separated from all the family she has ever known. She has borne a brave face to be sure, but what has it cost her?

The old settler bows low. “It would be my honor, my lady, to spend my few remaining years in your new world.”

“Then if any others there be who are yet sound of mind and spirit - and I fear there will be few - come with them to Lady Friede’s church. There ye may await the new world’s birth in peace. That place will not burn ere the new painting is done, for there the painter dwelleth in the attic.”

The settler cranes his neck and with his beak plucks a gray feather from his back. Yorshka bends her head so he can tuck it into her hair.

Despite the surrounding squalor, the exchange holds all the dignity of a knighthood.

When they leave the house, Friede half expects (and dreads) that Vilhelm will not get up to follow them. But he does, albeit slowly. Through all his recent ordeals, he has always gotten up again and again. Friede takes that as reason to hope.

The path to the church is short but steep: back to the frozen lake, then up a series of switchback paths and increasingly long ladders hung against the walls of rock and ice. The greatwolf leaves them at that point. No doubt it can simply leap up to the clifftops, borne on the snowy wind. How convenient.

They stop each time the ladders reach a new and higher ledge on the cliffs. They have all faced trials of late and none of them have much energy to spare. Friede stands guard, not that there is much need for it. She finds it easiest to keep her eyes on the frozen lake. Looking at anything nearby requires looking at the fire around her and beneath her feet, and she cannot bear that for long. At least the flames on the lake are distant.

While she watches, she listens. Vilhelm speaks to Yorshka when he has the breath for it - not because he wants to, Friede knows, but because it keeps him from thinking too much. To her surprise, he is the one who initiates conversation this time. His tone is a touch less biting than usual as well. Was it Roslein’s intervention that reached him, or Yorshka’s tale of the guilt she carries, so similar to Vilhelm’s own? Or is he simply weary of Yorshka’s determined efforts?

“What became of you when Sulvyahn made his coup?” he asks now. “Surely he did not spare you.”

“Nay, he imprisoned me atop the steeple of mine own church. He laid no hand upon me and left no mark. His torment bore a different sort of face. He gave me no word of my brother, no matter how I begged. One day he brought me a severed finger and told me ’twas Gwyndolin’s.”

Vilhelm is silent for a moment. Friede wonders what he is thinking. He is an executioner: his way is swift death, not slow pain. Sulyvahn’s method is not the one he would have chosen. That brand of mental and emotional erosion was Friede’s province, and that of her sisters. Such was the skill she brought to bear on Father Ariandel. She sees far too much of herself reflected in that severed finger. Yorshka has held a mirror up to her. She winces inwardly but says nothing.

“What did you make of that?” Vilhelm asks, more interested than antagonistic.

“I had a letter from my brother secreted within my gown. I knew he lived in safety, beyond Sulyvahn’s reach, and would be well again in time.” Yorshka’s voice takes on a hint of pride. “This I did not reveal to the traitor. I wept and hid my face in mine hands and made him believe I did not know him for a liar.”

“Curious. I would not have thought you capable of deceit, not even to preserve your life.”

“I know not what the traitor intended for me. Did he permit me to live so that I might sanction his rule in my brother’s stead? Or was I to be offered to Aldrich?”

“No doubt you and the Darkmoon were safest while Sulyvahn thought you his ignorant hostage. And what became of the finger?”

“I never learned to what poor soul it belonged. I…let it fall into my tower bonfire.”

There is rebellion in those words, the defiance of a frail child who was not so frail in the end.