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In the days before the Shattering, when living creatures sheltered peacefully under the Erdtree’s golden shade, there lived a man and a woman.
Or so that was how the story was supposed to go.
Vyke wore the armour of a Knight of the Roundtable who served the Golden Order and proudly followed the banner of Godwyn the Golden.
So when Godwyn left to fight the dragon Fortissax to protect the holy city of Leyndell, Vyke did not hesitate to take up his arms.
The battle was long and endless; his fellow knights may have failed to fell the dragon which wielded the power of lightning but Godwyn the Golden fought with the blessings of the Greater Will and by this, Fortissax saw defeat.
By the time the battle had ended and the dust had settled, Leyndell’s walls were left ruined but her spirit was unbroken.
Vyke stood with a bloodied gash on his cheek and watched, along with all who fought with him, as Godwyn the Golden extended a hand in friendship to the dragon he had defeated.
Vyke followed Godwyn through battle and into the newly constructed Church of the Dragon Communion, sprouted on a tiny spot of land surrounded by the cool, calm sea.
His fellow knights found the wide expanse of Limgrave to be almost a shock after the cloistered heights of Leyndell but Vyke breathed a little deeper when the salty sea breeze blew into the church, ruffling the prickly green grass he stood on.
“The Dragon Cult,” Godwyn the Golden said in a voice like thunder on a clear day, “would be enshrined here on this island, where the dragons can live in freedom and knights can come to worship.”
“To take on the dragon’s power,” Godwyn looked out into the crowd, “would be to take on the Greater Will’s power, for if the Greater Will had opposed it, would our victory have happened?”
The dragon Fortissax loomed large over the church; a protective serpent who watched the demigod with luminous eyes and when Godwyn the Golden looked up at Fortissax and smiled, it seemed like the moment stretched infinitely in time.
“And should we not take on that power, to better protect the Erdtree?”
When the knights lifted their swords in a cheer and the dragons gathered around the church threw their heads back in a roar, their combined voices shook the earth.
As his comrades left, spilling out into the expanse of beach in front of the church, Vyke would linger in the cool shadows and reach out with reverent fingers to touch the opened prayerbook on the newly hewed stone altar.
The Dragon Cult taught its worshippers to wield the power of nature, to bend lightning to their whims and drive it into their enemies.
To wield dragon incantations, the priestess said in a voice like an impending rainstorm, was to take on the essence of the dragons themselves.
She glanced at Vyke then with a face too perfect to be human, and the Roundtable Knight felt his heart stutter in his chest.
Vyke listened to Priestess Lan's voice and watched the way her fingers flexed around her favourite weapon and thought: beautiful, like dew on the sharp edge of a greatsword, glinting in the moonlight.
She smiled only when they stood alone beneath the shady expanse of the great Oak tree next to the church with the sea in their ears, and Vyke felt something unfurl in his chest.
“Come,” she said, as if Vyke had any option but to follow.
She taught Vyke the correct way to weave lightning with his hands, the way to pull his focus inwards to channel into his incantations, the best way to avoid her attacks when she conjured up a red hot glaive that drove explosive streaks of lightning into the earth.
He taught her the name of the flowers that grew in abundance across the church’s grounds and brought her stones that glittered like the rainbow on a rainy day.
He studied under her tutelage with an intensity he reserved for fighting and when he wasn’t, Vyke watched the way she moved among the rest of the worshippers at the Church and always forgot to breathe when she looked up and met his eyes from across the aisle.
When Vyke left Limgrave, his bloodied fingers wrapped in layers of cloth and hurting, he thought only of Lan and the way the dragon fire painted her skin.
Lan taught him the sacred dance of dragons, the steps needed to take the spirit into himself.
“It is not enough to be able to learn how to wield dragon power,” the priestess touched Vyke’s shoulder lightly as she moved around him, “one must be able to fight like one as well.”
A pause before she said: “Not all are blessed with this knowledge.”
“Teach me,” Vyke said fervently and dared not to reach out to grasp her hands.
“I will,” Lan promised in a voice that curled like smoke.
The battles he fought were bloody but brief and later, his fellow Knights began to whisper among themselves that he, a low-born Knight of the Roundtable, was favoured by the dragons.
Vyke ignored their knowing looks every time he left the holy capital and never looked back.
He packed gifts of bloodroses and Trinia Lilies, carefully protected from the long and harrowing journey from Leyndell, and with each blossom given Lan would touch them gently before placing the flowers on the stone-hewn altar.
“Come, Vyke,” she said, certain that he would follow as if he was her Shadow himself.
The seasons were changing when he arrived at the Church of the Dragon Communion again.
In the years since, worshippers had built another dragon cathedral in the east but Lan remained here and so Vyke returned; his personal north star.
Today the sea was an unruly wash of blue and wild winds churned up waves that tried their best to swallow the sandy beach whole.
Lan was unmoved as she stared out from the arch stoneway of the Church but her eyes softened when Vyke journeyed up the short sandy path.
“Knight Vyke of the Roundtable,” she said with an incline of her head. When she lifted her gaze, the wind caught and whipped the hem of her white robe around her bare feet. She looked terrifyingly beautiful.
“Priestess,” he said and it came out hoarse. He coughed and tried again, “Lan.”
She smiled then and stepped through the threshold, welcoming him in.
The church was dark and a brazier of incense smoked quietly in the corner. Vyke could smell the sea and the smoulder of dried leaves in her wake.
“Lan,” he said again and when she turned and gave him her hand, Vyke thought his heart would burst from the fierce bloom of happiness in his chest.
Lan was an exacting teacher, one who ensured Vyke would repeat his incantation, his slashes until she deemed the execution perfect.
And as the battlefire in his blood began to cool, he laid his head on his dragon priestess’ lap.
“Vyke, beloved of the dragons,” Lan murmured in the dark quiet as she carded her fingers through his hair. “I have but a small gift for you.”
She pulled her fingers from his hair and when Vyke turned his head and saw the golden glow of a blessing, nestled in her upturned palm, he held his breath even as he reached out the same time Lan said: “Take this Dragonbolt and know it is from me - Lansseax, sister of Fortissax."
And with those words, she leaned down to press her lips against his forehead.
Later, when Vyke’s fingers still dripped with blood, he would kneel and pledge his allegiance to her.
In the dying sun and under scorched grass, Lan’s eyes would blaze the red of dragon fire as Vyke felt the same flame in his chest and thought, I would burn the world for you.
Vyke returned to a capital wrought in despair and misery.
Godwyn the Golden had fallen in the Night of the Black Knives, alongside countless others. More blood had spilled in front of the Erdtree and for the first time in an age, it welcomed souls into its arms.
The Lands Between could do naught but weep.
Amid the fog and darkened corners of Leyndell where assassins now lurked, Vyke would take up arms once again.
But now there was no victory to be had, only exile as Queen Marika herself turned them all away.
Tarnished, Marika had called them with a voice like ice and sorrow, I banish thee.
In the unrelenting heat of the Badlands, Vyke thought only of the cool green grass of Limgrave, the quiet solitude of the Church of the Dragon Communion, the ghostly feeling of Lan’s fingers tangled in his.
Tarnished, they were now called, forgotten by Grace.
But Vyke could still see the pale gold flicker and could not quiet the rage in his heart.
High above, the Erdtree's mocking glow filled his every dream.
His warspear dripped with blood by the time he arrived at the edge of Limgrave.
But where once stood the Church of Dragon Communion, now the building had fallen unto itself.
Wild grass sprouted between broken stonework and the lifeless form of a dragon slumped over what remained of the stone-hewn altar.
When Vyke looked out over the broken walls all he could see was the silent mournful sea.
Long after Vyke willingly walked through fire to return to his dragon maiden, long after he had lost his mind to the eternal flames and the bloodlust, he would see another stand before him.
Their fight would be bloody and costly; when the Tarnished leapt at him with dragon lightning in his hand, a distant part of Vyke’s brain would recognise the glaive just before it sank into his flesh.
In his last moments, Vyke would think not of the unending urge to burn the world, nor of the bloodlust that had consumed him for an eternity but of a church near the sea and a priestess who smiled rarely but beautifully every time she said his name.