Chapter Text
His master had bid him farewell gently, kindly, in the deep of night. Maybe in another time, a sendoff for a knight as esteemed as he would have been a great affair, but the dragons had no such interest in great affairs, many caring only to sit on in silence in their temples, waiting for- something.
Ornstein had never understood, but his master had guided him away gently, told him that here was a calm and quiet place, where they could find their true being, and he believed it.
He believed everything Gwynsen had told him.
And so he’d travelled back to his homeland, back to where the fire was fading, and the Fire Keeper had bowed solemnly to him, as he’d offered himself up to the First Flame. It was the highest honor, they’d told him, to burn as Lord Gwyn once had, to offer themselves up for the righting of the world.
And yet-
It’d been painful. No, it’d been - more than any pain he’d recalled in his life, and he’d had his fair share. It’d been soul-deep, some deep part of the flame remaking him, and-
He’d opened his eyes. Ash fluttered away from his skin as he hauled himself out of a coffin, and began walking. He was Undead. (Unkindled, he’d later learn: Undead who had failed to link the flame, and were summoned by the tolling of the bell, signalling the coming end of an Age of Fire.) The realization had stunned him.
Ornstein the Dragonslayer, reduced to a shade of his former self, stumbling along the High Wall of Lothric and retching as he was disemboweled, as he was beheaded by the red-eyed knights, as he saw more and more of a land that he could not recognize. (He did see Anor Londo, though, and that made his heart beat faster.) He was a failure. He was a farce, and home had never seemed so far away.
Firelink Shrine was a home for wanderers and outcasts, and it seemed he was no exception there. They welcomed him, and did not question when he refused to talk about who he’d been. Instead, they ate and drank and Ornstein helped care for the many sorcerers, and they told him tales of the Ashen One.
Shen, they all called her, and laughed. Slight as a twig, looked as if a stiff breeze might knock her over. But she is the Ashen One for a reason, they said.
“Been gone for a long time,” one of them remarks once. The rest of them grow silent, uncomfortable, before the Fire Keeper reminds them that Shen is often gone for long stretches of time, and that they should be glad to have such a stalwart protector. Her smile is warm and placating, but the Dragonslayer can see the tension in her hands.
He has been observing, learning, for a long time. The Fire Keeper may be missing her eyes, but her emotions are easily read through her hands, and Ornstein takes it to mean that the Ashen One does not often disappear for this long.
It is hard to tell the passing of the days. Time is warped here now, the Fire Keeper tells him. Cities that should not exist at the same time simply do, and there are mountains that do not seem right, cliffs like the world has been smashed and crumpled together. When he asks, she only shakes her head in despair. "I can only hope that Shen will link the flame, and that she can right all of this disaster."
His hair grows long, and Ornstein is no closer to knowing how to get back home.
-
The shrine goes silent, once. Ornstein can hear footsteps in the main room above. Silently, the others get up and file out, and he’s left with only a few others, who sigh or steadfastly ignore the departure of the sorcerers, clerics, and merchants.
“Do they all go to attend to her?” He asks, and an old man laughs.
“Sure they do. Kissing her ashen ass, hoping they can get anything out of it. They forget that she’s no Lord - not yet, at least!” They share laughs and jests, but there is a bit too much tightness to their words, and Ornstein realizes that not all of them like the Ashen One. “We old ones tend to be of the mind that, well-” The man lowers his voice. “Maybe the flame should die. Maybe a new world will come to replace ours.” Smiling, his unseeing eyes raise to the ceiling, full of blind hope and faith.
Unsettled by the treasonous words, Ornstein lifts himself from the bench and goes to see the Ashen One for himself.
As he climbs the stairs, he wonders what she’ll look like. What does a godslayer such as the Ashen One appear as? He thinks of Gwynsen, the aura that he carries. It quiets a room. It didn’t ever matter in the old days, in the palaces of Anor Londo, that he had that shock of white hair or an imposing stature. When he walked in a room, you felt it.
He walks into the shrine, and feels nothing.
The high vaulted ceiling sings with the noise of the merchants and travellers, but they are not clustered around anyone. They linger in small groups, muttering and talking, souls exchanging hands, and he pushes through the crowd cautiously, feeling for something, anything-
He steps backwards, and someone crashes into his back, and he spins about, apologies spilling from his lips, and a familiar gauntlet collides into his as lithe fingers wrap around his arm, and he stops in shock, staring down at the golden metal.
His gauntlet.
His gaze rises slowly to the Ashen One, and she’s asking him something, her lips moving silently, but all he can see is red because he’s seeing Gwynsen again as he leaves his armor there, his lover’s lips pressed against his forehead as they weep, asking the ultimate sacrifice of him-
Ornstein does not think before he punches the Ashen One square in the nose.
There is a satisfying crack and blood slips over his gauntlet as the girl goes tumbling, and he goes stalking after her, weaponless but not caring. Shouts rise around them but he doesn’t care in the slightest.
His lover swore that no one would touch his armor. The only way he’d let anyone get their filthy hands on it if he hadn’t been able to stop them. If- If he’d been dead.
Ornstein’s hand wraps around her throat but she stares back up at him, fire in her eyes. She waves off the weapons being pulled with a lazy hand, and disgust rolls through his mouth. She truly believes she cannot be hurt.
Her blood slips down her face, over his head, but he doesn’t care. She murdered his lover.
“Care-” She coughs, voice strained. “To explain, stranger?”
“You murdered him,” he hisses. He sees red.
“You’ll have to be more specific-” She attempts a smirk, but it falls as soon as he squeezes harder. Good.
Her lips start to turn blue, and he drops her. Weapons are still unsheathed around them, but he only has eyes for the Ashen One. She killed Gwynsen. She killed him.
“The Nameless King.” He says finally, and her eyes widen. “You killed him!” He goes to advance further on her, ready to take her neck in his hands again and snap it, but the sudden look in her eyes stops him.
Guilt.
Recognition.
Understanding.
He stops, staring down at her. “Give me my armor back.”
She glances up at him, looks down at the gauntlet he’s been eyeing for some time, and nods, unstrapping them and handing them over. As he watches her impassively, regret starting to curl uneasily in the pit of his stomach, she steps around him to wave off the onlookers, saying peaceful, placating words. But he doesn’t hear them, only feeling a void where his heart used to be.
He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.
Catching a glimpse of the Fire Keeper tenderly wiping the blood leaking from the Ashen One’s nose, he feels sick with himself, and slips away into the shadows.
He is Unkindled now. Clenching his long-abandoned gauntlets, he swears that he’ll get back to his home. To where Gwynsen fell. And there, he’ll kill her.
There, he will bring her to her knees and let her beg.
Ornstein doesn’t know the rules of the Unkindled. Doesn’t know if he has more than one chance. But it doesn’t matter. She slaughtered his lover. He’ll spend the rest of this life and all the rest of them taking her down, if that’s what it requires.
It’s as simple as that, he decides.
She will die.
-
He’s holed himself up in some dark corner of Firelink Shrine - he’s slept in worse - and yet, when he wakes, his armor is stacked neatly a few feet away. The image of the small woman creeping in while he slept makes his blood boil, and as he goes through the practiced motions of suiting up, he clenches his fists.
How dare she? The guilty feeling that haunted him in the night disappears, replaced with another burst of rage.
Heat seething through his bones, he hunts throughout Firelink Shrine for her. The people who accepted and talked with him jovially yesterday now give him wary stares, and he watches as even the old man ducks out of the way. So much for being against the Ashen One.
He’s stood alone before. After his (first) revival, when he sought out Gwynsen. He’d travelled countless lands on his own, searching for his master, his partner. He hadn’t needed anyone else then. So he wouldn’t need anyone else now.
Ornstein steels himself as he steps out into the crisp air and sees a familiar figure perched on a heap of rubble. The clinking of his armor draws their attention, and the Ashen One turns towards him, relaxed.
“My oath to my master demands that I avenge him.” He bows to her, breathing slow to control his rage. “I must-”
“If you’re not aware, I have greater concerns,” She interrupts him, and he glances up to find her gaze imperious. “I understand that I have hurt and offended you deeply.”
Rage growls somewhere deep in his throat.
“Dragonslayer.” She says, firmly yet placatingly, the same tone she used with the inhabitants of Firelink. “Your master had gone hollow. His existence was not kind, nor was he the person you would have remembered.” She pauses. “If you had found him, he would have killed you as well.”
Shock reels through him, and it takes all of his centuries of training to keep his knees from buckling, clenching his teeth and riding out the emotions hitting him. By the Flame. Gwynsen had gone.. Hollow? How long had it been since-
“Ashen One..” He breathes, “...how long has it been since Lord Gwyn linked the flame?”
Their head tips in confusion. Something in his stomach sinks down, down, down.
“Who..?” They shake their head. “The name seems familiar. I swear I’ve heard it before.”
Now he falls to his knees. By all the gods. He is in a land, a time where Gwyn’s name is not even recalled. Gwynsen had gone hollow. Ornstein is a man completely lost, with nothing to his name. No one will even remember him now. His glory is gone, his honor is gone, all that is left is the scraps of anger clinging to him and the remnants of his duty.
He looks up at her. “I am a knight from an age long past. The only way I can reclaim my honor is by killing you.” He lets out a deep, calming breath. “I know not why I was risen, and I apologize for my interruption of thy quest.” He slips into the old, formal tongue. It helps steady his nerves, and brings to mind Gwynsen’s steady voice. “But I cannot let thou live.”
The Ashen One studies him with a hard, critical gaze. She wears a combination of leather and metal on her small frame, a cloak too big for her wrapped around her shoulders. The bottom half of her face is covered, and a hood frames her hair, but Ornstein knows that like many other opponents he has faced, appearances can be deceiving.
He waits what feels like an eternity before she speaks again.
“Pray tell, Unkindled, what is your name?”
“Ornstein.”
“Ornstein.” She repeats his name, as if testing it under her tongue. “I will make a deal with you, Dragonslayer Ornstein. You help me, and at the end of my journey, when it comes time to link the flame-” Darkness flashes in her eyes. “Either you shall watch me burn, and see my death for yourself, or I shall withstand it, and you may lay me down to rest beside your master in the dragon lands.”
He meets her eyes and sees no malice. Her words are even, measured. Clearly, she had been thinking of it for some time. And yet-
“And how do you plan to keep me alive at your side, Ashen One? Shall I play the damsel hiding behind you?”
She smirks, and hands something to him. An ember. He feels the residual heat inside it, feels how it thrums to the new pulse of fire in his being - is this what it is to be Unkindled? He’d never quite noticed it before, but it is as if the ember amplifies every part of his being, and he feels his fire reaching out towards it.
“Use it.”
He lets the fire embrace him, a wave of hot air coming down his throat, his blood suddenly a bit too warm, and looks up at her. He feels stronger. Feels like he has been coated in spiderwebs his entire life and suddenly, they have all been ripped away.
Ornstein cannot see her face, but there is a smile in her voice and eyes all the same.
“How curious.” She murmurs. “So I was right. A second Ashen One.”
“What? Explain.”
She shifts on her perch, leaning forward to study him closer. “We Unkindled are those who attempted to link the flame, only to fail and be reduced to Ash. Most are just Unkindled. They cannot light the bonfires, cannot travel far upon them-” She eyes the crushed ember still in his hand, the faint glow of his form. “...and cannot call upon the power of a Lord of Cinder. Like I can. Like you just did. But the Ashen Ones are different.” The reverent, deep cadence of her voice fades. “That is what I have learned from the Fire Keeper, anyways. The Unkindled will die if they are killed. But we..” She smiles. “We cannot die. Unless we go hollow, that is.”
“Unless we go hollow…”
“Yes. So, at the end of all this, Dragonslayer Ornstein… I will have no purpose left for me, and I will let myself hollow.” She leans away, crossing her arms over her chest. “And in the meantime, us two Ashen Ones will save the world.”
He finds himself letting out a bitter bark of laughter. This is ridiculous. This is all absolutely ridiculous. And yet.. Knowing that there is an ending, somewhere distantly in sight..
It gives him strength that somehow even outpaces the powers of the ember he’s consumed, as he kneels down before her, and the words feel like sludge on his tongue, so wrong, so wrong, as he swears his loyalty to her. “I, Dragonslayer Ornstein, do hereby serve as your faithful knight, to defend you and fight in your endeavours until the day comes where you have linked the flame, and gone hollow.”
She stares down at him, and nods. “I accept your vow, Dragonslayer Ornstein, and its terms. The world requires our help.”
They are great words. Noble ones. Words he would have rather heard out of Gwynsen’s mouth. Resentment for himself, for the Ashen One, curls hot in his throat, and he steels himself, trying not to let it show in his demeanor, but he knows that if not for his helmet, his face would have given it away.
Gwynsen laughs at him long ago, patting him on the cheek fondly. “Everything you’re thinking shows on your face, except when you’re fighting.” They lay side by side, foreheads touching, and his lover is laughing at the red dusting his cheeks-
Ornstein jerks himself out of the memory to see the Ashen One hefting out something from behind her, and as she approaches him, each step slow, she shocks him for the third time in a day.
In her small hands, is his spear.
He takes it reverently, feeling its weight in his hands. Thousands of years have not degraded it- impossibly.
Gwynsen kept all of this safe for him, until he’d gone hollow, and then even after. Ornstein knew what happened when men went hollow. They lost their sanity, their memory. They fought mindlessly, recklessly, without care for their own lives. They were broken men. And yet-
The Ashen One cannot see the water welling up in his eyes, and for that, he is glad. “Thank you,” he murmurs to her. The bitter regret haunting him earlier comes back, and he could kick himself. He has punched her in the face - she has not healed it, he can see the bump and darkening bruise of her nose - and yet she has given him everything he’s asked for.
“I am sorry for my behavior.” He says, before she turns away and his chance is lost. “I should not have hurt you.”
She raises her eyebrows, before shaking her head. “Do not think twice about it, Dragonslayer. It is a good reminder that behind every hollow was a man, once, and that men have companions and loved ones.” With a respectful nod, she leaves him with, “I will meet you at the bonfire tomorrow morning.”
He watches the dark-haired Ashen One leave, and he feels as if some tension should be disappearing from his shoulders, some magical weight being lifted, but in reality there is nothing at all. Hatred for both himself and the Ashen One seethes behind his eyes, and he tightens his grip around her spear. Doubt seethes within him for the constant indecisiveness of his emotional state - you’re a soldier, you’re better than this - but he ignores it.
Making that deal will be the worst mistake she's ever made, he decides, striding up to the top level of the shrine with slow, measured strides. So will be giving him his weapon.
He already looks forward to ramming it through her throat.
-
In the early hours of the morning, he wakes to the typical silence of Firelink. He has grown.. Familiar with it all. No one disturbs him in his secluded corner, and he has slowly adjusted to being Undead. Well - he thought he was adjusted.
All until a certain Ashen One came in and ruined it all.
Ornstein goes through his morning routine unsettled by the thought of journeying with her. It only occurs to him then that she’d put a quite obvious loophole in for herself, and he curses himself soundly for not recognizing it in the moment.
The Ashen One had never specified when, exactly, she would go to link the flame - only “at the end of her journey”. Thus, if she found purpose somewhere, she could string him along for however long she desired. He grinds his teeth in aggravation. He is a fool. Such a fool.
And yet, as much as the words had tasted foul on his tongue, he does not want to break a second oath.
So he goes about his routine, and gathers his meager possessions. His armor, his spear, a ring that had been buried with him, and precious few healing items.
Muscle memory persists, even through death, it seems. His fingers know how to thread together the fine parts of his armor and how to gather his hair into its high clasp for his helmet. His red hair is filthy, though, and he winces. He knows the Fire Keeper and others have access to water for cleaning, but he knows it has never been his place. Nothing is his place anymore, after all. He fell from his old grace the moment he left-
There is no use dredging up old memories, he tells himself, and moves on.
Keeping his steps soft and slow to move silently in his armor, he creeps down the staircase, slowing when he hears voices.
“Ashen One, are.. Are you sure? I am sure that there is not meant to be more than one who shall link the flame.” The Fire Keeper’s soft voice barely reaches him, and he clenches his fists.
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
A sigh. “You know how it has all ended before, Ashen One. Are you willing to take that risk again?”
“It’s not like that. I just don’t mind the assistance, and he..” She hesitates. “If I am to survive the linking of the flame, I will owe him something.”
Silence. Tense, disapproving silence, before he hears footsteps, and as he steps around the edge, he watches the Ashen One kneel down beside the bonfire on her own. Waiting for him.
Gritting his teeth, trying to keep his roiling emotions in check, he focuses on each step forwards toward her. Each step crossing a distance that feels like an eternity, until the flame is right in front of him and the Ashen One jerks her head up to look at him.
Twin swords rest at her hips, he notices, short and curved. Simple. He will have a difficult time defending from all the angles she can cover, but she will not be able to stand against his attacks.
Good.
“My knowledge of the place should be enough to take us both there.” She says quietly. She sounds defeated as she offers him a hand, stretching the other towards the flame. “Shall we?”
“Where are we going?” He makes no effort to take the offered hand, and she narrows her eyes.
“That is a good question. I have not yet figured it out myself. I was hoping for a second opinion.” A half-smile.
“Very well. I am sworn to you.” Her smile disappears as he takes her hand, and then there is nothing but the warm heat draping over them, and he can feel her soul next to his, almost blinding in its radiance, and he thinks briefly that maybe he was wrong, maybe this is something worthy of being a Lord of Cinder, and then that’s gone too, and all that is left is her brilliance, fading into white.
White snow.
He looks around.
There is nothing but snow and trees.