Chapter Text
Antebellum – Conquest and Consolidations III
*Excerpt from Kenric Lothar’s ‘Theonótita’ an anthology of post-convergence political manoeuvring described through the exploits of several Lords and Lady’s of Cinder in an episodic and euphemistic lens. *
And so, the Lord Marion rode down upon Astora restored in a squall of holy embers. Flanked by their silver knights of sunlight; they advanced on the desolated southern gate amidst the combatant sea of men and monsters. Where each minion of Ojáncanu rose to test the Lord of Cinder fell a charred corpse.
Whilst cries of despair and woe had already filled the streets of the city of a thousand princes; now came but one tremendous cheer. ‘Gloria Solis!’ These words became armour for the innocent and incandescent armaments for the beleaguered few still holding the line.
Even with fires renewed, the horde of chaos was truly massive. And as their godly escort faltered in its face, the swell of bodies only served as kindling on the Astoran knight’s scorched path. With sundering might they dealt death to the risen foes of their once ancient kingdom and carved a path to the head of the snake.
Ojáncanu, scarlet-maned giant and first king of the wild places, glowered down with little beyond contempt at the lord before him. Woe be his, however, for with one mighty blow, Marion the wanderer brought him to one knee before his swarming court. With a second exacting strike, his head did roll in the mud at their feet.
Driving away the jabbering hordes of wretched beasts towards the few cracks in the earth that would offer them refuge; this knight, the Fire’s will made manifest, strode into the rays of a bounteous dawn with nary a word of thanks.
** ** **
Owain stared into the yawning abyss before him, lips pursed, mind still. There was nary a whisper in the cavern that had once rung with the bestial fury of demons. The slope before him and his companions, once festooned with the infested, was but a dry gravel path leading down into that interminable darkness.
In one hand he held his ever faithful spear. A shaft of boreal ash with a winged tip of ineffably sharp titanite that stood even a head taller than this great knight. His armour, forged alike to his spear, hissed like a hollow’s breath as engraved plate ground against burnished chain. His ash-crusted tabard did not even flap for there was no wind. Just stillness. Absence. Void.
His mind, assured of their safety in that moment, turned to his three companions. The first was a squirrely fellow in flashy clothing; as sharp with his tongue as the curved dagger and rapier hidden beneath his cloak. The second, bedecked in plated iron, tattered leathers, and cruelly inflicted scars; passed his Warhammer back and forth between his meaty fists.
The third… her eyes were on him. Those eyes, one an emerald dipped in a sea of black and the other its diametric opposite, teased at him, at his mind, looking for even a hint of what marked him as a lord of cinder. To her credit, the knight could not parse even the simplest hint of hers either.
It was simple with the other two. Ambrosú was a duellist of the highest calibre who found his purpose in dismantling any and all problems that dared rear its head. Torhte was of a mind yet instead of an expertly placed jab he would simply crush said head to a mangled pulp.
Azadeh the drifter was… unlike that which he had been led to believe. Her people, the eternally jovial Catarinians, were said to worship the ground she walked on. In a scant few months, she had garnered infamy amongst the ranks of the cindered as one who appeared, struck, and left the battlefield in equal haste. Each time she would take but one life and only the most critical one at that.
A commander, a marksman, an armoured champion; they would look upon her repressive scowl and be claimed in a storm of desert flame and enchanted steel.
Then she would leave.
Sifting between the ranks of titanite clad men and women and vanishing into the sand-winds. It had grown such an omen that entire regiments upon seeing her claim a life would simply give up. Yet, she would always claim that singular life.
A single act of cruelty to spare the need for a thousand more.
Or, at least, that was how Owain liked to imagine she would term her selectivity.
With the subtlest of exhales, he turned, and tapped the butt of his spear against his armoured boot. The idling ceased and the four of them began making their way down the slope. It was slow going, descending into the bowels of the earth with but their holy glows to light the way.
“It does not do, this skullduggery,” Torhte muttered while using the haft of his weapon to steady his descent, “In my time, I drew the last breath from many hired blades. I would not become one now.”
“The alternative is not as preferable as you might think,” Owain ignored where the path forked towards the ledge he had gone blow for blow with a magma-spewing abomination on. In the back of his mind ancient bemoanments of how debilitating his armour was on such loose terrain surfaced once again.
“Tell us then,” the brute replied. For all his faults he was refreshingly blunt with discussion.
“You believe yourself strong, son of the great swamp,” a curse dared escape his lip as the ground shifted under a new step, “yet even with this holy reinforcement I would not try my arm against even the slightest of the folk who dwelt here with anything but the greatest of care.”
“In truth?” the cindered exile huffed in recognition. Dually as refreshing was the man’s ability to accept the wisdom of those who knew better, “I am master of many things… though I suppose that affords me the grace to heed the words of masters in things I know little of.”
“Wise words,” Ambrosú’s silken voice joined the fray, “I did face a remnant of these scorched halls. A howling beast, a twinned ruin of wolf and boar, it claimed my heart’s blood many times before I took its own in turn.”
“Well, I never faced such a foe,” a low chuckle escaped the lips of the knight, “so, you can show us the way if one does lurk here.”
They reached the cragged shore of the once molten lake. Owain pressed an armoured foot down gingerly, more than his fair share of flame-scorched memories returning as he did. When the frozen surface did not give, he added his full weight, and took a single, bold, step beyond the shore.
“That was my greatest foe,” the duellist continued, “the greatest bane of my people laid low by the lowest of their number.”
“An undead?” a rare phrase uttered by the duskily skinned Catarinan.
“A philanderer,” the guffaw that escaped his lip coupled with the deep rumble of Torhte’s own making.
“I see why Mirrah barred you from her lands,” Owain did not hide the amusem*nt in his voice yet no laugh was gained from him.
“I would not cross the founding mother,” the rogue stepped lightly between curls of frozen magma, “I slew her hallowed form to join with the flame myself… it would not do to dwell together with that spectre above us both.”
There was a withdrawn second as he paused a little ahead of the group.
“No matter,” he turned, “tell us of your great quarries, Owain the faithful.”
“I could not say,” he steadied himself with his spear as he precariously stepped across a dark fissure, “would you hear of my travails at the zenith of my strength, or when I was but a maligned near-hollow.”
“Well, if both are on offer then I must reveal myself a glutton for the weaving of tales,” the Mirrahnese scoundrel’s mouth twitched into a smirk as he walked aside the knight.
“Then… first came a woman ensconced in the frame of a mighty spider and wreathed in flame,” he tightened his grip on the shaft of his weapon as the ache of those flames on his skin returned, “and second… a wretched thing of shadow that I fought far from the light of our lord.”
“What made a wretch the champion of your adversaries?” Torhte asked, his voice laced with intrigue.
“It had a… rage unlike anything I had faced before or since. So palpable the stale air of its crypt was rank with it. The dark itself was both its tool and weapon… and drawing close to its body felt like…”
“Like what?” asked the Catarinan, her voice illuminated with her own flavour of intrigue.
“It was of a likeness to how it felt to offer my soul to the flame,” a shudder ran through the man, “except instead of that burning righteousness it was wholly absent of anything but gnawing loneliness. It was as if all that I was had been torn away and reduced to ephemera.”
Another pause was shared between the four lords.
“Count me glad that I need not face such a beast,” Owain nodded, if only to himself.
“You may not… but the former of my great foes may still be in our path,” his free hand glanced up and at the threadbare leather thong around his neck. The simple, brass, ring hanging there brought back memories more disquieting than even the fiercest of Izalith’s fires.
“Oh… fantastic,” Ambrosú nearly tripped on a curled outcrop of rock as he spoke. Owain was thankful it served to cut through his, no doubt, imaginative rejoinder.
“How much further?” Azadeh cut through the conversation with her signature curt attitude.
“There are steps not far beyond the gloom veil,” Owain gestured directly ahead, “it winds around the cliffs and down further still ere we come to the outskirts.”
“Good,” she noted.
“Tell me, if you would,” Owain took the sudden loquaciousness of the lady to press something that had dwelt in his mind, “your name, it is unlike any I have heard of your kinsmen. Why is that?”
“You undoubtedly know only those of noble stock,” of the other three, she was the only one to step without care on the treacherous ground. It did not seem to impede her at all, “my people are of less refined breeding. We ply the land in the southern reaches; far beyond the ken of many.”
“Consider my curiosity sated,” a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth as the first carved pillar came into sight.
“I consider it in debt of a similar inquiry,” the lady of cinder deftly shifted the blade of her scimitar to not clang against the outcroppings in its path, “where do you hail from, second of the flame?”
“Nowhere,” he replied, perhaps a moment too quickly, “… at least not a place I can remember dwelling within long enough to claim as my own.”
“Then, surely, you must be of Lordran,” she had grown unusually outspoken in comparison to the nigh-on catatonic vagrant that had arrived with her coterie of silver knights.
“I believe our friend here said it best,” his gauntleted hand gestured to Ambrosú, “I would claim as such where it not for the animosity that dwells still.”
It had been months since the twin gods of war had stridden forth with a grand host each in search of his kind. It had been strange, bordering on obscene, to mingle and live amongst the gods of legend. Doubly so when some had met their ends at the tip of his spear… at least Ser Ciaran had espoused plenty reason for not putting him to death.
The royal family had, for the most part, avoided him. Save for a cursory greeting from the king of the gods himself; there had barely been niceties while passing in the corridor since then. Owain took it as a reluctance, at first, to consort with one’s own killer. Then again, he was but a small hinderance in the face of all the other dangers besetting the realm of the gods.
There were whispers of frost-bitten monsters in the shadows at night, an army of renegades and rogues under the command of a reviled pontiff, and the resentments of those who escaped during the first cycle building in the face of a lurid, new, reality.
And that prisoner… the one who would not stop screaming and babbling about golden trees, sinking oceans, and a myriad of other incoherencies.
It was because of said prisoner, however, that they now strode a long abandoned, and apparently long dead, battlefield of his. The man, once bloated with his own sad*stic gluttonies, had fleeting moments of lucidity. Even then, it was but the most tenuous grip, and he could barely string a handful of sentences together before devolving back into whines and giggles and mournful cries. All the while that sigil on his forehead burned on constantly and brightly.
In this case, as recorded by the only scribe that had taken to listening his words:
Wheel, oh flame of contemptuous fate
The deep one’s only light
Kindle for thy unholy mate
To mark this eternal fight
This monk of a little-known order had barged through the palace; past guards, nobles, and ladies in waiting. He had come to the throne of the king himself and entreated, nay demanded, him to hear these words. Words that, unlike any other he had heard in the months of listening, held meaning. A tome and a half had been filled with words that seemed to lack substance beyond the ink it took to scribble them.
Not only did these words seem to hold meaning and reference. They were coupled. Referential. As close to coherency as he had ever come. What’s more is the ponderous mumbling that had proceeded it for near on a fortnight.
And so, he was here. With stray lords of cinder. Hoping beyond hope that what he would find was little more than a scorched tomb of a foolish, forgotten, deity. Though Owain was rarely fortunate when it came to blind hope… that wasn’t fair. His hope, his faith, had sustained him. It had been the momentum behind every spear thrust and the last line of his defence when his armour had not sufficed.
The knight was snapped out of his reverie as he left the magma-bed and found the stairs. For a moment, he waited for the lingering goat demons that loomed in his memory to lunge out of the gloom and try to claim his head.
No such luck, if that be the appropriate phrase.
Torhte cleared his throat. The sound almost deafening in the eternal silence of the cavern.
“I have yet to tell tale of my greatest,” Ambrosú chuckled encouragingly at the brute’s eagerness to talk about his travails.
“Do not leave us in suspense, friend,” Owain replied, his eyes locked on each step before him. It had been many cycles since he had come this way and the stairs had begun to crumble into the depths below. The going was slow yet inexorable.
“I shall answer as you have,” he fell silent for the time it took to draw his breath, “first, my challenge when I was but a lowly outlander? There was a master pyromancer, enamoured by tales of yore, who had become a charred mockery of what he sought to be. It was a fight most daring for to grow close was to tempt succumbing to his conflagration.”
“And, naturally, you were bare-chested and hammer-armed?” the duellist japed at the man within reach of said hammer.
“Nay, it was an axe, but other than that your words hold to the truth,” either the man of the great swamp did not recognise the cheek of his companion or simply ignored it.
“And your zenith?” Azadeh asked from just behind Owain’s back.
“The Queen of the Deep Swamp, a twisted water serpent mingled with the blood of our ancient royalty. Her children had begun to pollute the waterways of my people and so I cut the problem out at the source.”
“A sad necessity,” she replied morosely.
“Doubly so when you relieved yourself of the opportunity to term it as ‘removing the head of the snake’,” there was silence, thankfully.
“What of you, Catarinian?” Torhte cut through the oppressive silence with his question.
“…” she maintained her silence for a moment, “I fought, first, a man reduced to little more than a beast… and my greatest was… a friend, beholden to an oath that cost him everything.”
“You would slay a friend?” Torhte scoffed.
“For his sake,” she snapped back, “of all our kind that I have met; those that would claim no knowledge of granting mercy to an ally taken by the curse… I would name them as fools, cowards, or liars.”
“Aye,” the Mirrahnese lecher agreed, albeit quietly, “It seems as much a duty as the god-pyre itself.”
Torhte and Owain stayed silent and did not offer opposition to her stance. The latter of the two’s mind turned to his own acts of ‘mercy’. Faces swam before him in the chthonic twilight. Logan, stripped of everything, even his mind, and surrounded by a mountain of knowledge. Solaire, his true friend, driven to madness by a false miracle… Reah… as much his saviour as he wanted to be hers… taken by that damned wyrm for cruel means… had he only been on her trail faster…
Maybe she was out there still? Free of their curse and able to return to the life she truly deserved. The fire could have him for its sordid needs… she didn’t deserve a second more in a world like that. He would face the armies of Izalith alone ten score times before he would seek respite in favour of her pain.
“Something moved,” Azadeh whispered, barely heard over the groups own breath, “behind us.”
“Keep your blade ready,” Owain responded, just as low, “we are not far from more open ground.”
“Will that aid us?” her voice had grown a tenseness he had yet to hear.
“I would rather not be caught by one of their ilk on such narrow confines,” the knight responded, his voice even, at least to his own ears, “it would be a battle ended before it had begun.”
They continued on, straining at every sound and flicker in the darkness. Torhte eased his footfalls, no longer lumbering along as he was want to do. Even Ambrosú, who would hum in the quiet moments, had grown sombre and vigilant. Owain did not look back at the others, keeping his eyes locked on the steps before them and, further even, on the shadows for even the slightest of shifts.
“Lord Gwyn spoke of Lady Izalith,” Torhte spoke evenly, flippantly even, “I would imagine a lady of blasphemous flame would dwell somewhere better lit?”
“It was,” Owain’s heart tremored for a beat as he heard a noise over the conversation, something heavy being lowered as quietly as it could be, “the halls below were lit by eternal flame, the rock itself melted like wax… the heat was stifling in this armour.”
“Then what happened?” he replied, his blasé attitude continuing on as if they stood care free on the training field.
“I do not know,” Owain heard it again, yet it had grown further away. Through the gloom he could vaguely make out where the stairs ended and the ruins began.
“The chaos faded, over time,” Azadeh spoke out, “by my time there were few who even knew of demon-kind beyond the tales we told our children.”
“And now they may be back as we all are, their full might restored,” Owain was not one to let dread weigh on his soul but now… now it did.
“And they sent 4 of us,” Ambrosú added, his words spat like a soured wine, “maybe Lord Gwyn does want you dead, Owain.”
“Perhaps…” the loyal knight let out a sigh as he reached the open ground. Some of the pillars had collapsed and the tiled floor was little more than shards of stone amongst dirt and dust. The lack of machete wielding demons was a welcome sight though.
“Do we face our lurking friend?” they gathered around as Ambrosú subtly gestured back the way they’d came.
“Not yet,” Owain was not going to force a confrontation in this darkness, especially when whatever it was had height on them, “we draw it on to the low ground and see if it wants to talk.”
“Aye,” replied the duellist before leading the way into the darkness.
The far end came up on them soon enough; the stairs to the right as decrepit as the rest of this ancient place. Sending Ambrosú and Torhte ahead; Owain went to give orders to Azadeh yet found her nowhere to be seen. Cursing under his breath, the knight planted himself in the path of whatever followed them.
The demon came out of the darkness like a ghost from his path. A rippling titan of muscle and twisted bone; the beast seemed to fill the ancient promenade entirely with its mere presence. Its furred hide was that same deep crimson he remembered and that wild flame burned in its eyes as it had done. The horns curling around its head were broken on one side, a jagged slash separating tip from root mid-way along its curling length.
Owain, took a deep breath and planted his spear in the dirt. With both hands free he removed the leather thong from his neck and slipped the ring on the smallest of his fingers. A silent prayer escaped his lips as he waited for the warmth to spread from his hand to his whole-self before speaking.
“I hope you find my words to be of a like to those you ken,” he looked for any sign this demonic bull was readying to attack. It was shy the great-axe that seemed to be the signature of their breed; yet even barehanded the knight did not want to tangle with the creature, “we were sent from above to meet with the lady of this place.”
It did not respond or, perhaps, it could not. Yet regardless it did not attack. The second burned took its passivity as a good sign for the moment. His spear stood on its own, just within reach, should it prove not as amicable as it appeared.
“I would bid you show us to her court,” more silence save for the deep rumble of its breathing, “I know the way, of course, though it would be remiss of me to show myself without invitation or escort.”
“Your words…” its voice thundered sonorously, “are of our tongue,” its mouth moved in a way that seemed unnatural to its form. Each word was its own chore to pronounce, “how come you by that ring?”
“It was a gift,” Owain let relief begin to alight the doorway of his mind. If it would speak then it was not without reason, “my mother’s mother bequeathed it to me when I was but a young man.”
“It is…” the taurus demon co*cked its head, “returned home, then.”
“Quite,” silence began and persisted between them for some time. Owain’s eyes never shifted from the monumental creature, nor did they stop searching for signs of aggression.
“It shall return further,” the creature shifted, pivoting back the way it came, “the lady shall receive you.”
With that, the demon retreated into the darkness, its footfalls easy to hear as it made its way back up the ruined staircase. In its wake, Azadeh emerged from the void, the light of her divinity returning as the beast retreated.
“How?” he asked, curious yet not willing to waste words unnecessarily.
“I found that with sufficient focus; the light of the flame can be held within, at least for a while,” she returned her scimitar to its scabbard, “a deft tool indeed for one looking to strike at the unaware.”
“Perhaps,” he glanced over his shoulder as the other two returned, “though it seems we are expected.”
“This gives me pause,” Torhte spat in the dirt, “why does a beast like that skulk like a rat in the dark?”
“Dark Blood,” cursed the duellist, “we should follow it back to the sun’s court.”
“And explain that we ran in the face of a single demon?” Owain was willing to scoff at the idea were it not for the uncertainty of the situation, “Lord Gwyndion led his personal legion to confront them before even I was a twinkle in the eye of my mother. If we, champions of the fire, cannot stomach even one so gentle as that, then how can we ever show our faces again?”
“I…” the mirrahnese scoundrel growled to himself, “fine, we push on but the moment we are set upon by ravening beasts; I pray you have enough time to see the vindication on my face before we are torn asunder.”
“Noted,” Owain shoved past the mouthy lord of cinder and down the stairs. He forged ahead, no longer still of mind. Something was afoot here. More so than the remnants of chaos; those visions, the faces, all of it was wrong. He was a master of the fire; he conquered everything in his path to restore the world.
He had slain the lords, the hollows, the vilest wretches he could find to do his duty to the Way of White. He left his weakness behind; it had burned in holy fire. He was the bane of the gods that dwelt here. Chaos Fire, he had traversed the abyss itself and done what not even Ser Artorias could manage.
So, why was he so damned afraid?
They remained unimpeded for hours after. Owain had designs on taking the walkway that led directly to the heart of Old Izalith yet the shifting of the earth had collapsed the way. Further down it was, then, through abandoned hallways and promenades made for truly titanic beings. At the slightest noise they would pause; sometimes it was but the shifting of stone above or below… other times though…
The great lake bed that surrounded the titanite walls of the city itself were as empty as the preceding halls. No demons, no half-ruined dragon corpses, nothing. No querulous maw beasts or living statues blocked their paths on their climb through the ruins. It was then, at the zenith of their climb, they found the first of chaos’ children.
Some vile mix of snake and eagle was curled up around a statue of its unholy mother. It did not stir a mite, even as all four stood around it talking in their lowest voices. As they found the way down, more and more abominations littered their path. Creatures of claw, fang, and shell lay haphazardly across the stairs and platforms that curled down into the darkness.
At one point, and much to the alarm of the quartet, they found the need to clamber over the spread-eagled body of another bull-headed giant that had simply collapsed in a doorway. Torhte, hammer-headed to a fault, took the initiative while the others whispered plans on how to not disturb the beast. When the creature did little more than let out a slightly deeper breath; the others reluctantly followed him.
It grew warmer the deeper they went. Though not the cloying, suffocating, heat of the heart of fire. It was gentle, soothing, like slipping ever so slowly into a hot spring after a day’s work. It was unnerving. Sleeping demons littering the floor, that was a point of concern, yet feeling the effects of soothing sunlight so far beyond its domain drew on Owain’s mind harder than most.
“We all hear that, don’t we?” Ambrosú said, the seemingly abyssal sleep of the demonkind restoring some strength to his voice.
“Snoring monsters? Aye,” Azadeh replied while taking care not to stand on the quills of one such creature slumped up against a wall.
“No, under all that,” the trickster scanned the darkness of the stairwell, “it’s… humming?”
“I hear no such thing,” Torhte and Owain intimated while slowly making their way down.
“It’s…” another word formed on his lips but did not pass. His shoulders fell ever so much before he, too, collapsed to the floor. There was a beat of true silence and indecision before Torhte prodded the scoundrel with the tip of his boot. He, like the creatures around him, did not wake. Even when the swamp-dweller drove his boot into his ribs; the man did not stir.
“…” the aforementioned kicker stared down at the unconscious Mirrahnese lord and let out a deep, so-very-tired, sigh. Letting his hammer hang from his belt, the man reached down and took the slighter man in his arms like one would carry a new-born.
“Did you have to kick him?” a crooked smile split his lips in the darkness before he turned wordlessly and carried their compatriot down the stairs.
Down and down, they went, each painfully listening for the slightest hint of a song over the rumble of sonorous breath. Owain could not read the thoughts of his muscle-bound companion but it seemed he was practicing throwing the small man as easily as possible. If it was for concern of his own passing-out or for simply discarding the extra-weight so he may fight… well, Owain was not going to put a bet down on either side.
“How much further, Second Burned?” Azadeh fell back a few steps to beside the knight.
“This is a far more ponderous route than my first sojourn here,” a light smirk dared to crack her otherwise sombre expression.
“Do you refer to that grand slide I noticed you staring down when we rested before?” she deftly stepped up and over the sleeping form of a Crocottan abomination and down without even glancing away.
“It was that…” a soft chuckle left his lips while he, far less deftly than his compatriot, stepped over a Capra-demon laying atop another of its kind, “or hours longer fighting through tight corridors such as these.”
“I would like to have seen such a display,” he held back a groan of embarrassment.
“In truth, my first foray down that damned thing did most of the work for the mother of flame by the time I fell off the other end,” she didn’t react yet the smirk on her face didn’t shift.
“I think we’re here,” Torhte slowed to their pace while the man in his strong arms murmured in his sleep.
He was right. Beyond a small antechamber were piled more demons than the knight had ever seen. The odd one on the stairs as they descended had been unnerving but, in that main chamber, dwelt more slumbering behemoths than soldiers in lord Gwyn’s assembled armies. They had to weave around towering piles of demons, all the while clambering over a carpet of their kin. All of them, snoring gently.
“There,” Azadeh gestured from atop a pile.
Owain crested the pile beside her and stared down on their target.
The mother of chaos was knelt in the middle of her throne room. Garbed in a robe of blackened velvet with her face swathed in the confines of her hood. She held herself up on arm and where she pressed on the ground; the tiles smouldered and glowed with heat.
She was truly a titan. Owain had thought that the monstrously writhing form of bark and flame that he had slain in ages past was simply out of proportion yet the queen before him would have stood a full torso taller than her greatest spawn. Her daughters, the ladies of her coven, were but specks lain in slumber against her legs.
She stared down at the ground, at the very base of her throne. From this distance he could not make out much but it looked like… a sapling? Even beside the deep, maroon, glow that seemed to waft off of the lady Izalith it glowed with an almost burnished gold.
“Owain,” Azadeh whispered quietly from his right. He didn’t need clarification though, as his eyes turned back to the queen; he knew exactly what was wrong.
Her eyes were squarely locked on them.
** ** **
“Did she speak of anything?” Lord Gwyn shifted in his throne at the head of his audience chamber. The four cindered ones gathered in front of him were still marred in the dirt and sweat of their journey. The god-king’s eyes, however, were solely trained on the armoured knight at their head.
He returned the unerring stare while considering his words.
“She spoke on many things, not always to a great degree of sense, sometimes about things I could not begin to understand,” the scowl buried with Lord Gwyn’s hefty beard only deepened.
“And of those things she spoke of,” he squared his shoulder and sat straight as he could to tower over his fellow ashen lords, “did you gain any insight into the threat she poses.”
“No threat… no,” he replied solemnly.
“I will remind you, sir, that the legions of Izalith are one of the very few forces that ever dared to come close to laying our hallowed sunlight low,” he did not raise his voice yet it echoed around the room like rolling thunder.
“And again, I say that the lady Izalith does not seem to have any design of a like to that,” Owain glanced to the wall of silver knights that surrounded them on each side, “her focus is… elsewhere.”
“On a plant?” a laugh threatened to escape the god’s lips.
“A sapling,” Owain remembered the way the timber, barely taller than a man, had glowed in the dark haze, “with bark of gold.”
The king let out a deep, weary, sigh.
“Fetch that monk,” the god brought his fist down on the arm of his throne, “and tell him to bring all his records of the prisoner.”
“My lord,” a page bowed and quickly departed down a side corridor, the sound of his boots quickly retreating in the still air.
“Owain, Knight of Lordran,” the knight felt a chill run up his spine, “Azadeh, Lady Resplendent of the Southern Nomads. Torhte, Serpent Slaying Warrior of the Great Swamp. Ambrosú, Harlequined Rose of Great Mirrah. I, Lord Gwyn of the Sunlight Monarchy, thank you sincerely for your service to mine realm and its people.”
Taking that as their queue to leave, and rather hurriedly, the quartet of adventurers left the room and into the greater halls of the cathedral. The four remained in silence till they had passed courtiers, priests, and a hundred other walks of life to find themselves in the warm evening air of Anor Londo.
“So… pub?” Ambrosú fiddled with his belt.
“I don’t believe there are any such places in a holy city,” Azadeh stressed loud enough to hear but not loud enough for an approaching group of pilgrims to take offence, “and at any rate I am befouled by who knows what.”
She shrugged and a small dusting of soot slid off of her clothing.
“I suggest we return to our lodgings camp to rest,” Torhte was already moving as he gestured towards the walls of the city, “wash, revitalize, and then we should meet again to make merry.”
“Yes… wait, you brought beer?” Ambrosú realised and set off after the much larger man.
“You didn’t?” their voices retreated into the distant hum of city life.
Azadeh scoffed quietly to herself as she and the knight followed their compatriots at a distance.
***
Thank you for reading! I decided the best thing to do considering the recent Elden Ring DLC was to just put this piece on hiatus till I could figure out if it was going to torch my plans which it did, kinda. Anyway, i digress and want to get back to doing a monthly addition. If anyone's worried this is effectively two different stories that feel like they're never going to meet then don't worry, we're nearly there. This is the sort of fic that i'm always kind of thinking about and i love putting it out there for you all to read.
On another note i'd love to thank my fellow creator and friend Isabel_the_Ace for letting me borrow their character Marion for the opening academic crawl. Please find a link to their work below and i encourage you read their stuff as it's always S-tier stuff.
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isabel_the_Ace/pseuds/Isabel_the_Ace
thanks once again and i hope to see you in the next chapter!
