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“May you be victorious, my knight.” Gwyndolin had said from her shrouded throne, “And may you return unharmed.”
The words still ring in the knightess’s ears, a soothing mantra as she descends further into the bowels of Izalith, or what remained in the wake of the demons. She was on a hunt, chasing down a defector who foolishly thought to ally himself with the beasts, another pointless bid for ungodly power that only the faithless would resort to. Beyond that, she knew little of him, and did not need to.
Gwyndolin trusted her to carry out this task, and that was reason enough.
She had been on many missions alone, but rarely so far from home. The towering structures of Izalith made her feel small in a way unlike the spires of Anor Londo – for they stood tall even beneath the stone cavern that arched over the entire city. It felt as though they should crack the surface, and let the light in, though there would still be an impossible distance for the sun to reach.
Instead, it is lit by torchlight and molten rivers that seared her eyes to look directly at, and made her feel as though her armor should melt into her skin. It even looked alive, like it would lurch up and towards her on the scorched bridge and wash her away. She tears her gaze from it, and thinks instead of the flickering candlelight of the Darkmoon tomb.
He should be near. He would not have passed the guarded gates of the city itself, but the dark caverns just beyond the city walls were not an uncommon hiding place for fugitives with nowhere else to go. It is deathly dangerous, but most who would hunt them would not chase them through the lava fields.
Unfortunately for him, the blades were not most hunters. She carefully descends the shallowest slope from the end of the bridge she had crossed.
As she steps lightly through the fields, looking for any places one might hide, any crevice out of place, she grips her sword tighter. The humanity in her chest was so prone to overreaction, writhing harder than ever against her ribcage. As if one thumping heart was not enough to keep her on edge.
She finds him, at last, among cracked and fallen pillars that had been knocked away from the city walls. He had traded his silver armor for robes, already scorched from either his new home or his untrained pyromancies.
She wonders if he, too, hides a face too stained by flame to see beneath his heavy hood.
With her sword thrust out before her, she announces: “Stand, traitor, and face your fate.”
He looks up, but does not move from his spot as she approaches. Perhaps he intended to scare her off with the guilt of attacking an unarmed man—but she sees the traces of fire lingering about him, and has little room in her heart for mercy. Then, he laughs, and the humanity in her chest swirls again.
Ah, another one who overestimated their cleverness.
She whirls on her heel, drawing the parrying dagger from her belt to drive into whatever beast may lie behind her. One of those lithe, ram horned demons, as it turned out, who would now be missing an eye. Not that he would live long enough to lament it.
“You will have to try again in another life.” She hisses over her shoulder, wrenching the knife from the demon’s head, “I will not leave my lady today.”
One cleaver clatters to the ground as the beast shields its wound and screams, a wet, gurgling sound that made the knightess sick. She stabs into its chest, and pushes it from her blade with her boot. The weight of it leaves her breathing heavy, but she stands refuses to flinch.
It is no surprise when it stands again, clutching a cleaver in one hand and its bleeding chest in the other, demons were nothing if not resilient. She slides gracefully out of the way of the swing of its hulking blade once, twice, three times with ease. These were untrained beasts, after all, and this one was half blind. She just had to wait for an opening.
Her confidence betrays her when it swings again, clashing with the plate that protected her hip and sending it skittering across the rocky ground with her in its wake. Her heart pounds, her mind growing frantic with the sharp pain as she stumbles so near to a pool of lava, watching the plate disappear into its bubbling depths, a stray spit of fire scorching her shoulder.
Something must have shattered, or a muscle must have torn, but she has no time now to discern the nature of her pounding wound. She would survive, no matter how dire.
She drags herself away as fast as she dares, groping around through the hazy air for her blade.
And just in time, as the demon takes its chance to leap at her before she can stand. She rolls to one side and the cleaver, by some invisible grace, just grazes her helm, tearing away the metal without piercing her skull.
The beast roars, struggling to pull the blade from where it had buried itself in the ground beside her, and she takes the chance among its struggling to jab her blade upwards into the creature’s waiting neck.
All is still for just a moment, apart from the knightess’s trembling breath, her shaking hands, and the drip of blood down her blade to stain her gauntlets. She wrenches her sword and the demon along with it to the side before it can collapse on her body.
To her relief, the estus flask on her hip had not cracked amid the fray. She tears the cork out with her teeth, and chugs the ever-warm liquid as fast as she can. It would not cleanly or properly mend her hip, but it would have to do for now.
Rising to aching legs, the recently healed one still protesting as it is forced to bear weight, she turns to the traitor who had watched the entire ordeal in silence. He is hunched over, trying desperately to summon some flicker of flame into his palms as she approaches with an obvious limp.
He raises his hands in front of him, and with a quick slash his begging is over before it can begin.
--
Word reaches Gwyndolin days later, and not a moment too soon.
She sits at her bedroom window, a plate of untouched biscuits and a cup of tea gone cool before her as she thinks of where her knightess might be. She reminds herself of the complications of travel, the scarcity of bonfires and the bones of fellow undead that the knightess was hardly fond of using when she did find them. Her target could be more elusive than usual, perhaps she stopped to aid someone alone the way, perhaps a battle was raging—
Gwyndolin forces herself to clear her head, pressing her face against the window.
Even that is unceremoniously interrupted by the fluttering of black wings on the other side, clattering against the glass. The irritation fades when she sees that it is one of the large messenger crows with a letter tied tightly to its foot.
She lifts the window to allow it in and hurriedly unties the letter, carefully unrolling it to avoid tearing the wind-battered parchment.
It reads, in a messy hand:
Lady Gwyndolin,
Pray forgive my lateness. Due to circumstances I failed to foresee, I must rest before I begin my journey home. My mark was not alone. I will explain further when I return. By the time you read this, I will surely be close.
Your humble knight,
[-------]
She did not even need to sign her incomprehensible signature, for the knightess’s curt writing was identification enough. Yet she always did, her script turning to scribbles beyond the first, equally ambiguous letter. Gwyndolin wonders if she simply has no idea what to write…
It mattered little. The knightess was returning home, and Gwyndolin would be at her gate to greet her. She feeds the crow--who had been bouncing impatiently on her windowsill--the corner of one of her biscuits for a job well done, and rises to fit her crown to her face.
---
She is just in time for the knightess to arrive on her doorstep.
The knightess stumbles before her shrouded gate with scorched, crooked armor. Half her helm is cracked away to reveal a bruised eye and cheek, new wounds atop her permanent scars, but she drops to a knee nonetheless. Whatever time she had taken to heal, it was far from enough. She notices the estus flask hanging from her belt is empty of all but residue.
Gwyndolin finds herself longing to reach out. She could fix everything before her in minutes, but the knightess rushes to explain before she can even welcome her home.
“I must ask your forgiveness once again, my lady. He was not alone, as I had foolishly assumed he would be. He had demons at his side already, the beastly things…” She shakes her head.
Gwyndolin opens her mouth to speak, but she is not yet done.
“But I bring proof of my duty.” Her voice is hoarse, but she speaks steady even through the rattle. She reaches into her pack to produce the ear required of her. “Please, accept this.”
“Thou need’st not apologize, as thy duty is done, and thou hast returned to me.” Gwyndolin tries to soothe her, but the words seem empty in the face of her wounds, her devout presence. She takes the ear and vanishes it into thin air as soon as it is beyond the gate between them.
“Yes, he will trouble us no longer.” She admits, sounding very slightly more at ease. Perhaps just tired. “If…you have no more need of me, I will take my leave.”
“Wait.” Gwyndolin says, though it comes out as more of a command than she intended, “Come in, if thou would. Allow me to treat thy wounds.”
She raises her head with a start, and Gwyndolin almost wishes to retreat upon herself. It was not as though she had offered anything unusual, but it felt strangely forward. Her gaze, however Gwyndolin worried, seemed more startled than uneasy, even warm.
The knightess nods and stands to meet the hand extended to her. Her touch is hesitant, the slightest brush of brass fingertips against a smooth palm, but Gwyndolin’s gentle grip guides her beyond the fog.
“I promise, I shall heal on my own. I would loathe to intrude…” She says, keeping the undamaged portion of her helmet tilted towards Gwyndolin. It seems almost silly that she should wish to hide burns when Gwyndolin’s snakes were slithering at her feet, and the knightess certainly showed no fear of them.
“I would be far more displeased to leave thou in pain. Tis my duty to assist my blades, after all.” Gwyndolin insists.
Some of the tension eases from her. Accepting kindness may be difficult, but duty is second nature.
She still insists on removing her gnarled plate on her own, leaving her in a plain tunic and pair of trousers that looked miserably worn compared to Gwyndolin’s fanciful attire. Much of it is encrusted with old, dried blood. Her helm is removed last, the fractured pieces nearly falling apart with the unhooking of clasps that held it on.
Gwyndolin ghosts her hand over the knightess’s cheek: “May I?”
The knightess nods.
Gently, the soothing light of her magic begins to envelop her face, twisting in golden strands around her more recent wounds and chasing away the redness and drying blood. She does not touch the oldest scars, for they are not hers to alter. She revels in their texture, anyway, the map they paint across her skin.
The knightess sighs and leans just slightly into Gwyndolin’s hand. Heat rises to Gwyndolin’s cheek, and she prays her crown is enough to hide it. One of her snakes, meanwhile, is flicking its tongue restlessly.
Gwyndolin moves no lower, as there is no need, allowing the tendrils to spread over the rest of the knightess’s body in search of things to mend. As it swells around her hip, she tentatively stretches the mending leg, smiling at last to find it both painless and functional.
Gwyndolin finds that her smile is quite radiant, even beyond the light currently shrouding her.
Perhaps they sit like that for too long, far beyond when her scars have faded and her twisted hip is healed. Perhaps it is unnecessary for Gwyndolin to stroke her thumb over her cheekbones, perhaps it is unnecessary for the knightess to lift her hand to hold Gwyndolin’s.
It matters little to either of them what is unnecessary when the knightess presses a kiss to Gwyndolin’s knuckles. Her legs tangle among eachother
“I owe you much, Lady Gwyndolin.” She says against the back of her hand, warm lips still brushing her skin.
“As I said, tis my duty.” Gwyndolin nods, “And…my pleasure.”
“As it is mine.” The knightess stands, however reluctantly, and gives a deep bow.
They must part, they know, for the night will not wait for them. The knightess had guards to command, and Gwyndolin a kingdom to run when morning came.
They both know as the knightess leaves that she would soon return. Perhaps, for once, with no new scars to speak of, and no offerings beyond that of each other’s company.