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All had been bathed in wild light when Quelana had last seen her home. The scars of the ill-fated flame had torn themselves into the halls of the room she had once shared with Quelaan, the practice chamber where she had called her first faltering pyromancy into being, and into each member of her family in turn.
She had passed by an altar on her way to the epicentre of the catastrophe, one she did not recognize from the day when she had turned her back on her surviving siblings and ran. The flakes of golden paint time had peeled away from its contours suggested it had been a vibrant monument, equal to the grandeur of Izalith. Atop the flat stone, with hands neatly folded to clutch a carved flame in the lattice of their fingers, lay a corpse. It was her own.
Old routine remembered brought her to stand on a rocky protrusion that had escaped the claim of the lava. From its vantage, she could see at last the exterior of the city, gaze caught by the gaping hole in the dome of Izalith’s tomb from whence the demons had since sprung forth. She wondered what she had hoped to find in returning to the ruined husk of the buried kingdom.
There were no answers to be found in what remained nor anything worth preserving that had not been destroyed by the boundless chaos; she did not delude herself into thinking so. Yet, she continued on, seeking something. Deeper and deeper into the coffin of stone, she was set upon by greater numbers of demons, the true children of chaos. Like they sensed the pretender in their midst, they spared her no quarter. Each was immolated in her own flame.
Along the approach to the once-palace, she startled from her reverie at the sight of a figure in the robes of a pyromancer of Izalith. No footsteps had announced her presence and the hood cast shadows dark enough to conceal her face. She could have well been any one of the misguided undead who saw no sanctity in disturbing the honest dead but Quelana knew that one of her sisters was standing before her.
Tears, cool and painful in the stinging heat of Izalith, pricked at the corner of her eyes and threatened to spill. She blinked them back and in that heartbeat an unrelenting grip closed around her wrist. The figure was a hair's breadth away from her now, her features still obscured. “Why?” It was an accusation, a demand. “Why did you leave us? You promised us all that you would help us if ever we should need it. We needed you! Where did you go?”
Her sister’s touch turned scalding, the heat of it burning Quelana as no fire ever had. She struggled to speak, though she knew not what to say. She could not have stayed, for she had always been a coward and a weakling, and she could not ask forgiveness for so heinous an act as their abandonment at her hands.
She twisted from her sister’s grasp, freeing herself, and fled from the steps of the palace as she had a thousand years ago. She did not look back nor think of her destination until she reached the place where the depths of Lordran gave way to the sky above. Remnants of dragonkind, those creatures humans had named drakes, roamed the valley. Their blue scales shone where beams of moonlight poured down, nearly dazzling her after the darkness of the ramshackle town on the outskirts of proud Izalith.
Her long absence from this land made the realization of her circumstances a slow dawning one - to stand beneath the light of the moon was to stand in the sight of the Dark Sun Herself. The prodigal daughter returned would not escape Her notice. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she looked upon the goddess in the flesh, standing serenely across the ravine as though She had always been there.
Quelana had met Gwyndolin only once. As the eldest daughter of Izalith, she would be the one to accompany her mother to Anor Londo in answer to summons of the Lord of Sunlight. Her sisters had been jealous, she remembered, and Quelaag had insisted that she present herself with the proper dignity lest the other lords frown upon the uncouth daughters of Izalith.
Lordran's great city was blinding. She had taken in the sights with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun, squinting up at the towering monolith where she would spend the next several weeks. Mindful of her manners, she had bowed in turn to the old paledrake and the First of the Dead - both of whom had arrived alone - and she had knelt at the foot of the throne.
Gwyndolin was her mirror. She was not the oldest of Her siblings, Quelana knew, and nevertheless She was the one who stood by Her father’s side as He ushered them into chambers of the castle not occupied since the war. They must have exchanged greetings, even pleasantries, but the fervour in her mother’s voice when she spoke of a new Flame was all Quelana could focus on.
She wished she could recall what she had thought of the young goddess on that first and heretofore last encounter. Despite the many days they had spent in each other’s company, her sole impression of Gwyndolin had been that She spoke each word with utmost care, as though any stray uttering could shape the world for good or ill.
It held true. Gwyndolin said nothing and the world held still - even the blades of grass ceased their gentle swaying as the undulating snakes hissed through them. Though She shone golden rather than silver in the moonlight, the deep shadows cast upon the contours of Her face illuminated it like the moon above - inscrutable. Quelana found that she could not imagine Her else.
“Lost Quelana of Izalith,” She intoned, with the gravity of a goddess passing judgement on a sinner. “Many centuries have come and gone since last we stood face-to-face. For what purpose hast thou returned?” The ghost of her sister’s condemnation below ringed the edge of Her words, something like hatred or regret. Quelana understood it from her kin, their scorn was rightly earned; she could recall no offence she had paid Gwyndolin.
“It has, Dark Sun.” Quelana stepped forward, such that only the thin, dark precipice separated them. “I have come to -” Again, the fatal question. She could not even construct a passing tale, for herself or for those who asked.
A frown crossed Gwyndolin’s face, the moon waning above Her. “Thy sisters have waited, they have prayed. No voice has answered them!” Her voice, cold as the executioner’s blade, wavered. “I ask thee once more: why hast thou returned?”
Suddenly, the truth she had not known was pulled from her by unseen hands. “I wanted to come home,” she said. It sounded indefensibly foolish to her ears, like a wayward child who had been frightened back into the arms of her forgiving family. Still, she had no other words for it.
Gwyndolin was silent. The thin tines of Her crown gleamed in the shifting beams of light and not for the first time Quelana wished she could see Her eyes. She stepped across the broken earth, borne across by the tangle of snakes that took the place of legs. Quelana should not have quailed at Her proximity, she was as much goddess as Gwyndolin, but she had forsaken the promises that bound her to divinity.
“Thy home is no more.” Though Her words fell softly, they held no comfort. “The flame of chaos spares nothing in its wake.”
“I know,” she said, and the torpor that had gripped her in Izalith slackened its grip, allowing a pain she had refused to feel for a millenium to rush in. It fueled some reckless fire, the same selfish impulse that had driven her away from Izalith. From it sprung the barbed reply: “What of your home, Gwyndolin? Has time spared the golden city?”
“It is as it ever was,” came Her terse lie.
“Of course,” Quelana echoed, the sentiment hollow. She had heard the tales whispered by humanity since the restoration of the First Flame, of its exaltation and - most quietly of all - of its desecration. More than that, she had touched the fire herself. It was not a kind and yielding thing. It took its tithe from each soul it sprung from in time.
The ever-burning Age of Fire could not last a thousand years without burning down, for those who knew it best had failed to summon forth a perfect and infallible flame. There was no recourse but to kindle faltering flames. How many souls had been laid upon the pyre, first of lowly lords and then of great ones? A conviction took hold in her; lofty Anor Londo fared no better than the lands below. Quelana knew, then, what passed between them - it was grief, raw and unvarnished. They were both all that remained of what once had been. “Do you miss them?”
Gwyndolin stiffened. Long moments passed, during which the downward curve of Her mouth betrayed nothing of Her thoughts. Quelana wondered if She had ever allowed to Herself to consider the answer prior to being confronted with the question. It was far easier to deflect, to deny, to run. Until the ruthlessness of thy home is no more, she had done the same.
“How could I not?” Another mirror. Quelana recognized the heartache in Her voice from the way it had consumed her own. Something threatened to shatter before her; some things were meant to.
“Tell me about them -” The only surviving Daughter of Chaos gathered up the hem of her skirts in her hands as she seated herself on the uneven ground. She pillowed the fabric beneath her, dirtying the hem without a care. “- and I will repay you in kind.” With her overture she extended a hand toward the goddess, palm up, in a supplication of sorts.
Part of her was certain Gwyndolin would refuse, turn on Her heel and vanish, leaving her kneeling in the dirt like a child at play. When a reciprocal hand come to rest in her own, an involuntary flicker of surprise crossed her face, plain as day. The last deity of Anor Londo smirked as She knelt to join her.