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Chapter Text

They did not understand each other, not in any way that mattered.

The Tarnished had no life behind him. No pain of loss, no experience. Just fragments, ideas of what might have been. There was nothing for him in the Lands Between but death and rebirth. He did not know what the ruins he passed by once were, nor did he know the people he put to the sword.

Ranni knew naught of real death. After she’d shed her mortal body, after Selivus had transferred her into her doll… she did not fear it. She did not fear poison or rot or the stinging blade of a soldier. She would never know what real death was like. There were more Ranni dolls. Dead, lifeless things for now, but should her current residence fail her, she could move on to them.

The two of them should not have learned, not really. They were too different on paper, their duties diverging so greatly that they could not learn.

But they were, at their core, people. They both dreamed, they both had nightmares. They both wanted, truly and deeply. They both feared. It took them time. A thousand lives, spent together. A thousand deaths. A thousand stories to be told.

They learned differently, at different paces, at different times.

Ranni was first. The Tarnished, so determined, so brave so…. Perhaps it was foolishness, to talk to a doll, to ask it for advice. To say that he missed her, that he wished she had said goodbye before going on her great journey.

It was endearing, the way he spoke. Her heart ached in ways she did not know, ways that it had not in all her life. And so the Tarnished was drafted into her service once more, tasked to slay the Baleful Shadow. Perhaps she was too harsh in her words, perhaps she had not needed to accuse him of sullying her name. But she had needed something to cover the waver in her voice, to stop the flush in her cheeks.

Silly things, really. A doll could not flush, and she doubted her spectral double, ever at her right, could either. It was hard, even after all these years, to suppress her more human thoughts. Iji would tell her that was good, Ranni… she did not know.

The Tarnished’s death shocked her. He was capable, she knew. He had slain Radahn, had claimed the Fingerslayer blade for her, had dueled heroes and villains of the old world. When the Noxian’s blade severed his hand, she worried. It would be pain, and the Tarnished would have to rely on his stave’s magic until one of his flasks could knit his hand anew. But he was perhaps the greatest warrior in the Lands Between, and even so grievous an injury would not see him beaten. Then the slime struck, a great spike thrust through his abdomen, a spattering of blood and bone coming with it.

“Tarnished!” Her shout must have been small, considering her stature as a simple doll, but it rung in her ears. Later she would recognize the fear, the panic. Later she would question it, wonder why she worried over the death of someone so used to it. But in that moment, perhaps for the first time in her life, she was afraid of death.

The Noxian warrior sneered and commanded its ant to move on, leaving the Tarnished to bleed in the dirt. It did not take long for the Tarnished’s shallow breaths to stop.

And then Ranni felt it. The pull, the blackness. This is death, Ranni thought, as the blackness overcame her. Surrounded her. She was alone, forgotten. Lost- no. There was something with her. No longer wounded, no longer dead. She could feel his soul, his very being roiling in this dark, his body being reconstructed with everything he had.

And then they felt it. A force, the same rebuilding the Tarnished. It recognized the second soul, recognized the threat it posed. Ranni could feel it pull at her, trying to dislodge her. To cut her free into… into death, she realized. True death, of both Body and Soul. Ranni the Witch would end, and her great scheme would be for naught.

Ranni snarled- or she would have, if her body had returned to her. Her will was stronger than that of the Grace, stronger than that of the Two Fingers. She would live to challenge the Greater Will, and no force, no being would stop her.

And then she was awake, stashed neatly away in the Tarnished’s pouch. The Tarnished himself seemed to be dozing over it, leaning into the light. Then he truly awake, sitting up with a start, cursing and reaching for his hand. It was there, and there was no great gout of blood from his chest. He was once more alive. “Tarnished,” he almost jumped when Ranni spoke.

“Ranni,” there was relief in his voice, and he stumbled over correcting himself, “Lady Ranni. I… apologize.”

“Thy apology is unnecessary,” Ranni said, crawling out from his pouch and settling near the Grace, “I…” there were many things she wanted to ask. Some she did not know if she could, “Do those… things always interfere when they sense you bear something dangerous?”

“They didn’t react when I had the Fingerslayer blade,” The Tarnished pause to consider, “I don’t think i have carried something more dangerous than that. Aside from you, my lady.“

“They do not fear the instrument of their destruction, but its wielder.” Ranni considered her words for a moment, “Were they not slaves to the Greater Will, I would think it intelligence.”

Ranni turned herself from her musings on the fingers to the Tarnished, rubbing at his hand, so recently severed from his body. “Thy hand-”

“Good as new,” The Tarnished said quickly, flexing his hand. “Stupid mistake, really. I overextended-”

There was something there, in his words. Ranni could not really piece it out, so she nodded along with his explanation, how too fast a strike had exposed him, how the anger at his mistake and the glancing blow he had taken earlier had angered him.

It was then that Ranni realized it. She was perhaps not the best at reading people, a fault many had tried to exploit, from the Greater Will to Selivus. But the Tarnished was not like them. He had sworn to her service on only their second meeting. He did not hide behind pretty words nor lies, and even as he tried to present his right as the thing that bothered him, his left was pressed into his chest, just where the slime’s great spike had struck true.

“It is not thy left,” Ranni finally said, “I prefer my servants to be true, Tarnished.”

He paused, looking down to where his other hand was, then shrugged, “It’s not…” He trailed off, “I mean no offense, lady Ranni, but I don’t think you would understand.”

He was right, to an extent. She would not, she could not understand the feeling that came with losing a limb, of being skewered and reconstructed by wills not of her own.

“I… thou speak true, Tarnished,” she said, “but I… I wish to understand.”

“Why?”

There were many reasons she could have given. Curiosity, the power that came with knowledge, a desire to better understand the servants of the Two Fingers. “I wish to understand you,” She finally said. “You hath served me well, Tarnished, yet thy motives elude me. Perhaps through understanding, I might divine the reason thou hath returned to my side, so many times.”

The Tarnished frowned at that, shaking his head and whispering something so low even she could not hear it. “Okay,” he finally said, “okay, my lady,” he said the last with a touch of exhaustion, as though he could not believe she would learn anything from it.

“I’m…” He paused, considering. “I’m still afraid of it.”

“Death?”

“Yeah, kinda stupid, huh?” Ranni could tell he was thinking now, by the way his tongue was loose, and his eyes were locked onto the light of the Grace. “I can come back to life, i can kill demigods, but death… I never got over it.”

“How many times hath thy seen the dark of death?”

“I have no idea. I lost count before i was out of Limgrave.” Was the answer, “my first death- there was a knight, patrolling the first step. I thought, ‘hey, maybe i can ask this guy for some direction. Grace isn’t exactly a great guide, you know.”

Ranni nodded, though she doubted the Tarnished noted, too deep into his own thoughts. “One hit, his great fucking spear. Whatever it was. Cut me from shoulder to hip. And then he just left me there.”

“I’m not a machine, you know. I’m a real person, and real people don't get a choice when death comes around. We all fear it. Even if we know we get to come back, the body doesn't give us a choice. Its like… like the fucking rat, at the back of your head, trying to scrabble out and live.”

“I do not think of you as a mere machine,” it felt important, that he know Ranni saw him, that he was real to her.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he said quickly, “That’s just… some folk, like Varre, they really don’t. I'm just a thing to them, really, to be given tasks.”

“I don’t think I ever thanked you. For being there.” He spoke after a long, silent pause, “you were the first person who was just… nice.”

Ranni would not have counted her actions that night as nice, but it felt nice, to hear the Tarnished speak of her as such, to see the half smile come back to him, after so many minutes of grimace and frown. “The spirit bell, those wolves, they’ve kept me in the fight. l I felt a little less alone out there, knowing they had my back.”

“They were a debt paid,” Ranni said, “though I am glad they offered thee some comfort in the wilds. I know it was not an easy feat, slaying Godrick and Margit, and all the others that have followed.”

There was another long pause. “Thank you, for being down here with me.” The Tarnished said.

“I… I am glad as well, that I hath chosen to observe. And that I have chosen a Tarnished such as you.” Ranni did not quite know what it was about this Tarnished. The stubbornness, the drive, the prowess. Perhaps something more.

“I think,” The Tarnished spoke before they could continue, “that it is time to try again. Once more into the breach.”

Ranni looked into the depths of Nokstella with him, remembering all the enemies it concealed. “Is thy mind as ready as thy body?”

“Yeah,” The Tarnished was really smiling now, and stretching out his arms, the confidence of a warrior returning to him, “it might be good for me, talking about this stuff, you know. But I’m ready. You want to go back in the pouch?”

Ranni could have waited there. The Tarnished would return to her, duty complete in good time. But this enemy was one she wished to see felled with her own eyes. And the Tarnished… she would not mind sharing travels with him.

Chapter Text

The Tarnished had very little to him. No name, no history, no family or fame to rely on. He’d been surprised Ranni even remembered him, on that rise.

“Do you know what this place was?” The Tarnished had earned himself a reprieve, after slaying the Noxian who had taken his hand, and a pack of electrified slimes besides. They were Tears, the Tarnished reminded himself, not that it mattered. They were dead now, and he had a moment to appreciate this strange space. A great city, all but abandoned and infested with Tears and other dark things.

“I am not quite old enough to have known this place,” Ranni said, “nor did my studies cover it quite well. The Greater Will did not… would not allow us that knowledge.”

The Tarnished settled himself on a ledge, looking down over a great void. “Why not?” He was, perhaps, too casual. She was his lady after all. But he knew nothing of this past, and any link to it fascinated him.

“The Will exiled them here, a very long time ago.” Ranni didn’t seem to mind, “for… something. We will never know, I think.”

The Tarnished took a moment to eat. The raisins were not very good. But Torrent ate them happily, so he would too. “Can you tell me what it was like?” He asked between bites, “before all this? I’ve fought through your old place and fucking- sorry, fought through the rot. I figured I’d learn about what this place was like before it all.”

“I… do not think my experiences are what thou think, when thou speak of the before.” Ranni paused, “we are not at the site of Grace. It is a safer place to speak than here.”

“Yeah but I figured… you don’t like them very much, right?” The Tarnished asked. He’d noticed she always seemed more still at them, more on edge. He hoped that he gauged that right, that Ranni’s long silence was not her judging him, or preparing to reprimand him for overstepping. He should probably apologize. “I apollo-”

“No.” Ranni cut him off, “bring me forth, Tarnished, I wish to see this city from a better position than thy pouch.”

“Oh- yeah, okay.” He pulled her doll out, hesitating a moment, trying to figure out where to place her.

“The ledge, if thy please.” He settled her down, smiling as she shuffled and grumbled at the thick layer of dust and debris she had to contend with.

“Thou art right.” Ranni finally said. “I do not like the Grace.”

“The Grace is not just a guide. It is a part of the Will.” She did not take a long breath, dolls could not breath, after all, but the Tarnished imagined she was preparing herself to say something painful. “In the ages before, when my body was not this, the Will named me Empyrean. Successor to Marika, destined to take her place. There were others, chosen by their own Two Fingers. Miquella and Malenia, my dear siblings.”

“So… you were supposed to split being... whatever Marika was? Or like, all three be the Will?” The Tarnished asked. He had a feeling the Will would not be quite so forgiving.

“It could only be one of us. And our family… it turned bitter, broken. We could not speak to one another without snarls and threats. I will not pretend I am innocent in that. Or of anything that has come after.”

“It made me angry.” Ranni’s voice took on a cold edge, something he had not heard from her, not imagined her as really, not until he saw Selivus force fed his own potion. “I hated it. I hated them. My family had already been broken by the Will once. And they came for us again.”

The Tarnished looked to her, realized she was flexing her tiny fists. “I- uh, I’m sorry, about bringing it up,” he tried. This was uncharted waters for him, and he’d rather not Ranni be angry for the rest of the time they had together.

“No,” Ranni’s voice had calmed, the edge blunted and turned away from him, “before all of this, there were happy days. We laughed, we fought. We were a family.”

“You fear death, Tarnished. I fear loss. Everything I had has been stripped from me. My home, infested with ghosts and monsters, my family killed or driven to madness or controlled by those things.” Rannui said. “I have very little left to lose, but I cling to it. For a hundred years I hid from the Shattering, I refused Blaidd and Iji leave to hunt my destiny.”

“I was…” Ranni seemed to struggle to say the next.

“You don’t have to say it,” the Tarnished said. She had already shared enough, shown him a side to her he had not really seen. But the little doll laughed at that.

“Tarnished, thou’st not a day ago exposed your own fears. Shown bear thy soul to me. It is only fair I do the same.” Ranni did not let herself stop, allowing her voice to roll into her next words, “I am afraid. Of loss, Tarnished. Of the deaths of my beloved companions. Of losing Iji, my oldest mentor. Of Blaidd, my brother and companion.”

“I am afraid, Tarnished,” She turned to him as she spoke, her eyes fierce, her voice steady, “that one day the Grace will take hold, and deprive me of you. Without thou, Tarnished, I would be sitting in my Rise still, paralyzed and waiting for something that would never come.”

“That’s not-” The Tarnished wanted to deny that, to believe in Ranni. Because he did, at the end of the day. Somewhere in him, the Tarnished truly believed in her, in the things she could do.

“It is true, Tarnished,” She said, “Even now, I know that had Ranni the Witch known what you would become, how deeply she would rely on you, she would never had tasked you with slaying Radahn, or retrieving the Fingerslayer Blade.”

“Thou hath faced your fears a thousand times, Tarnished. I am just beginning to confront my own.”

“Maybe,” the Tarnished paused a moment, “you know, maybe we can face them together,” he tried to smile, but Ranni’s eyes betrayed a great sadness, a pain brought by his words.

“No. Soon I will begin my journey, Tarnished, and it is a lonely one. I cannot rely on companionship now.”

“Well, you know, I’ve been thinking, once you’re you know… god, or whatever the Greater Will is, and I am Elden Lord, I can come with you.” He really hadn’t been thinking. But she looked so much smaller as she spoke, so much more afraid than he had ever seen her. “You, me, and-”

“No, Tarnished. My journey is mine alone.”

“But-”

“No,” there was an edge to her voice now, “too many have given too much to my cause. I would not add thee to that list. Let us leave, and speak on this naught more.”

Chapter Text

Ranni understood why the Tarnished made it so far. Why where a thousand others had failed and been forsaken by the Grace, this one man had succeeded.

He was ferocious in a fight. It wasn’t anger, or fear, it was some inner strength that saw him weave through the air, cut flesh and bone as though it was the thinnest of cloth. After watching him fight, watching the way he cut down Noxians with ease, Ranni realized if he did decide to oppose her, to deny her her great dream, there was precious little she would be able to do.

“It’s close, isn’t it.” The Tarnished had begun to drop their formalities. Ranni imagined it was hard to constantly refer to her as ‘lady’ and ‘princess’ when she was the size of his hands and stuffed into his pouch for most of their time together.

“I believe so.” Ranni answered. She could feel its presence, somewhere deeper underground. They had made it to a great basin, where the waterfalls drained into. The site of Grace here was just across the shallow river, the Tarnished instead electing to kindle a fire on the rocks across from it, an effort that failed nearly enough for Ranni to suggest he give up.

The Tarnished did not dally long. As much as he delayed through Nokstella to explore, to speak to Ranni, here there was one of that. Just one final mission for his lady. She could tell he was saddened, that he did not want this to be the last they spoke.

His fight with the Baleful Shadow was a brutal thing. Ranni watched it from a rock far outside the range of either of their blades, placed there by her Tarnished. She was glad of it, by the end. They fought with claw and nail, sword and spell. She had thought the shadow victorious when it twisted the Tarnished’s blade from his hand, but he lunged in, bringing it to the ground and forcing it to fight tooth to fist with him.

By the time the fight was over, the Tarnished was barely recognizable, and unable to even rise from where he had fallen, just beside the corpse of the shadow.

“Tarnished,” Ranni spoke, when she realized he was not reaching for a flask. “Tarnished, your flask is not empty.”

She was very slow, on account of her size and the knee high water she had to wade through.

She could hear the Tarnished attempting to wheeze out a response, his left twitching towards his pouch. There was not strength left in him, though, and by the time she reached him, he had given up the struggle.

Ranni tried it herself, dragging the flask out of his pouch, but it was easily as tall as her, and far too heavy to wield. “Tarnished,” she turned to him, and felt her heart break. In his eyes was not bravery, or acceptance, but the wild fear of a man breathing his last.

“I am here, Tarnished,” she told him, laying one hand beneath his eye, “we go together, even in this.”

And then there was nothing. The embrace of death, She could feel the Tarnished being reconstructed once more, and the Will attempting to pry her from the Tarnished. They woke the same way, the Tarnished leaning over his site of Grace in a doze, Ranni snapped back into reality as though there was no gap between her last moment in the world and this one.

Ranni almost thought the Tarnished had fallen asleep, the ordeal draining too much from him.

“So… this is it, huh?” He finally asked, almost startling her. “You go on your great journey, and we,” he didn’t finish the thought. There were a thousand things he could have said. They would never speak again, never see each other. Never speak of all they had lost, or the fears that drove them on.

“Tarnished,” Ranni said, “my Tarnished.”

“I-” The Tarnished shook his head, “I don’t suppose you’d just… delay a little? Spend some time with me, seeing the world?”

His voice was poisoned by fear, and by certainty. In another world, one in which, perhaps, she was a bit colder, they indeed would never speak again.

“There is a chest in my mothers study hall.” Ranni spoke, calling to herself a key. Its top was beautifully engraved, but its bottom was a simple two prongs. Iji would know what it meant when it was gone. “Open it with this.”

“What… what is in it.”

Ranni could have told him. Perhaps should have. But even she could not bring the words to what she was entrusting him with, what it really meant. “You will understand when you see it. Find me beyond the lakes of rot, once you have it. Find me again, my dearest Tarnished.”

And then she let herself go, allowed her soul to flow out of the doll, getting one last glance at the Tarnished staring into her lifeless form. There was one final battle ahead of her, perhaps her greatest of tests. But she was not afraid in this. She would slay her Two Fingers, and finally be free to pursue her grand design.

The next time the Tarnished saw her, her body was bloody and lifeless, leaned against the corpse of her own Two Fingers. He had plumbed the depths of the Lakes of Rot and dueled a great star Beast, slain dozens more foul creatures in her name.

“Ranni,” she could hear the fear in his voice, even if she could not respond. The fight had damaged her body beyond repair. He reached out, taking her hand with an almost reverential look, drawing from his pouch a great moonstone ring. Her ring.

Once she’d thought it useless, her great ploy driving it from her mind. Now, she feared it, feared that the Tarnished did not know what it meant.

Still, when he slipped it onto her finger, felt the surge of power within her, she hoped. For the first time in many, many years, she did not feel so alone. The power carried her, allowed her to appear before her Tarnished, her old body fading into starlight.

“Perhaps I need not have warned thee,” she said, “perhaps it is a foolish thing, to offer thou choice now. But I ask, dear Tarnished. The ring is a great oath, a binding oath. Should thy wish to be free of… free of it, this is thy moment to speak.”

“I read the inscription,” there was no more fear in his voice, and his eyes sparked with… with many things. Things Ranni would not dare to put to words, lest she was mistaken. “I am ready to walk this path with you, Lady Ranni.”

“I ask thee walk the path of lord,” Ranni gave unto him his final mission, one that intertwined with the destiny laid out before him by the Will, “take unto thee the strength of legend, claim thy throne. And at the end, when all is done…. We shall see each other again.”

He bowed before her, “Then I will see you again, my lady.” He said.

“Before I depart, I ask you take this,” from within her coat, Ranni drew forth a greatsword, dark and glittering, cold to the touch, “bear it with you, and know even separate, I fight at your side.”

“My lady,” There were many things he wanted to say, Ranni knew. The journey he would undertake would be long and lonely, and he would cling to whatever she said next.

“We will see each other soon, my Tarnished. Sooner than you know.”

And she was gone once more. The final pieces were in play, her last great machinations coming to their conclusion. But even as she sought old favors and older relics, she could feel the Tarnished wielding her sword, could sense the great journey he was undertaking. Even so far apart, she did not feel quite so alone.

Chapter Text

The Tarnished should have felt used to being alone. He’d only been with Ranni a scant few weeks, and compared to the many months he had been campaigning it was but a blip on a long, lonely journey.

He felt her absence, though, felt the lack of a second set of eyes at his side, the pleasant chill of her company. He didn’t fight his was back towards her rise, instead electing to ride around whatever marionettes and great crayfish were in his way. Even the dragon, ever guarding Ranni’s rise, was none the wiser to him slipping in behind it, finally safe from the threats of the world.

More than safe, in fact. The Tarnished recognized the great warrior before him. One of his few friends in this cursed land, and a great warrior to boot.

“Blaidd,” he called, though his happy trot towards him slowed as he saw what was beneath him. The great wolf man stood over the broken form of a soldier or some other sort, clawing at his own eyes, snarling and growling.

“I am part of her,” he growled, eyes Turning towards the Tarnished, “she… she needs me.”

And then something in the Wolf man snapped, and he was lunging to the Tarnished, blade outstretched.

“Blaidd?!” Was all he managed to get out before the blade took him through the throat.

The darkness of death, and the slow drowse of rebirth.

The first thing the Tarnished realized was that he did not know where he was. This site was… different, somehow. Colder, for certain. He knew where it was though- he recognized Ranni’s chamber, from the chair and stack of books she had sat on to the strange arcane instruments scattered around.

It was strange, to be reborn in a place he had never been. It had happened to him only once, when a trapped chest had locked him in a mine full of centipede-like rot worshipers.

This wasn’t that strange, oppressive magic though. This Grace was comforting. Akin to Ranni’s presence in life, and for that he was thankful.

“Blaidd,” the Tarnished reached for his throat, eyes going wide. “Fuck, Blaidd what happened?”

An empty room would give him no answers, so he began descending down. He paused only briefly, in the Rise’s original site of Grace. It had become something like a home to him, one of the few places that was both safe and insulated from the outside, without eyes on what he did or what trophies he collected. In one corner was an old project of his, a half dozen mushrooms growing in pots, each picked from a different region of the Lands Between. In another was a great collection of bows, crossbows, bolts, and arrows, some placed with the reverence they deserved, others scattered around them with no order nor reason.

He paid them little mind, though he did stop to grab some reagents for potion mixing. Perhaps he could craft some sleeping dust, to calm the Wolf down? There were a dozen desperate ideas in his head, but he latched onto that one as the only he could imagine working.

The wolf was still where he’d been left, still muttering and clawing at himself. The Tarnished was silent this time, as he approached. In one hand he held Ranni’s gift, the Dark Moon Greatsword, in the other a pot filled with sleeping powder. With any luck, he would not have to use the first.

“Blaidd, back off,” he had no luck, it seemed. The pot shattered on the wolves head, but the powder did nothing but anger him, and the pair were soon locked in a duel.

“Come on man,” the Tarnished shouted, blowing aside one of the wolves strikes with one of his own, “get it together, Blaidd.”

But there was nothing in the warriors eyes but pain and wild fear, no recognition or even regret. It was as if he had been reduced to his bestial base. “Blaidd-” the Tarnished cursed and rolled back. He could disengage and flee, call Torrent to him. Whatever happened to Blaidd must have a way to undo it, after all.

The wolf was not willing to allow that, though, and he leapt into the air, plunging his sword down. A fatal blow, if the Tarnished did not react. It was a simple thing, a move the Tarnished had learned to punish those who overcommitted like Blaidd had. Stepping forwards, beyond the blade’s deadly arc, lifting his own so that any attempt to recover would mean plunging oneself onto fatal steel.

Blaidd had taught him that move. They’d practiced it together to the point that it was ingrained into his instincts. The Tarnished could feel Blaidd make the choice, even if he could not begin to imagine why. He twisted, snarling, scratching, skewering himself on Ranni’s last gift.

The Tarnished’s next steps were unthinking, stepping forwards and pivoting around, allowing the blade to be jerked out of his hands by Blaidd’s weight.

“No sane man will take the blade to the chest,” Blaidd had told him once, “so you’ll have an opening to strike from behind. Take it, move quickly.”

The sword had pierced through Blaidd, and even as he coughed and died, he clawed towards his own, one last desperate attempt to strike down the Tarnished.

“Blaidd,” and then he was gone, body reduced to runes, armor clattering off of the air that replaced his body.

The Tarnished stood alone at the base of his lady’s rise, staring into now empty armor, as if waiting for Blaidd to return. It took him a long few minutes to come back to himself, to examine the body he stood over. A black Knife assassin. He had seen them before, here and there. This one had been mauled beyond recognition, Blaidd’s final act. And it had been to protect the rise from some paid assassin.

It took the Tarnished a long hour to get to Iji, full of panic (what if they had struck the smith first) and anger at the great hands that dropped to attack him. He need not have worried, though, Iji was still hunched over his anvil, reading yet another book.

“Iji,” the Tarnished was out of breath, and took a long few seconds to recover, “Iji, Blaidd, he went fucking crazy, he tried to kill me. He did kill me.”

Iji’s calm voice was welcome, though even the Tarnished could hear the edge of fear in it. He pulled the full story from the Tarnished, the fights, the final blow, the dead Black Knife, and then he began to explain, of his fear of Blaidd threatening Ranni, he believing the wolf to be a curse to his lady.

“And after all that, everything I have done to him, his final act was to save his lady.” Iji was silent for a long moment after, looking north, towards the rise. “Tarnished, the blade you carry, you understand what it means, yes?”

The Tarnished look to the Dark Moon Greatsword, hefting it before he spoke. “It is a gift Carian nobles gave to their… to their concubines.”

“And you know what you are to her?” Iji asked. His gaze was piercing, and the Tarnished, too busy stumbling over words he had not even said to himself, could not hide the truth with silence. “Go to her rise. The blade is more than an oath, it is a connection. Call to her. She will need you, in these darkest hours. I… I have apologies to make.”

“Iji-” The Tarnished started, but the smith was committed.

“Go, Tarnished,” he said, standing, “I have duties of my own, ones that must be fulfilled.”

The Tarnished could tell it was a dismissal, and there was precious little to protest. Instead he rode back north, thankful he had taken the time to clear his path on the way in, so that he could ride fast and heedless of danger. He was fast enough that even old Adula did not see him sloop into the rise.

By the time he was up and in Ranni’s chamber, barely half an hour had passed. The suns warm glow was muted there, and the Tarnished could feel the chill of night as he laid the Dark Moon Greatsword across his lap.

“Ranni…” he hesitated, unsure of what to call her. “Lady Ranni, if you’re still listening… Blaidd- he attacked me. He was in pain, and wild, and I- I killed Blaidd, my lady. He struck down a Black Knife trying to get access to the rise”

“Blaidd is dead?” The voice was barely more than a whisper, one of pain and longing. For the Tarnished to be lying, or mistaken, or for this to be another cruel trick of the Two Fingers. In a way it was.

She had coalesced before him, though instead of sat tall and proud atop her books, Ranni was standing just in front of the Tarnished, each hand clenched and trembling, her spectral face streaked with glimmering tears.

“I am so sorry,” Was the Tarnished’s answer, his head bowed in guilt and shame. “I… I did not think my blow was fatal. He taught me it, he knew how to avoid-”

“No, Tarnished,” Ranni’s voice was hard, and full of anger. The Tarnished almost flinched away from her, afraid he was about to bear the brunt of this. “There is only one person to blame. The same that created the black knives.”

“Who?”

“None other than Ranni the Witch, of course,” Her laugh was bitter, “who else’s plots could go so wrong, after all? Who else could cause something like this.”

“That’s not-”

“True? Fair? I have led my family to ruin, my servants to death. My plots have set in motion wars and calamities I could not even imagine.” Ranni was silent for a long moment. “You should flee my service, Tarnished, before you share the same fate.”

“I will not.” The Tarnished was almost offended by that suggestion, “Ranni- my lady, I mean you no offense, but this,” he held up the sword, “is more than an oath. You did not cause Blaidd his madness, nor did you start the wars of the Shattering.”

“My plots-”

“Your plots did not release the rot onto Caelid,” The Tarnished interrupted, “your plots were not years of war and death. You have done dark deeds to free yourself of the Two Fingers, to free this world of the Greater Will. But it was your brothers and sisters who made war on each other, who unleashed horrors. Not you.”

“You are a fool, Tarnished, clouded by… by your affection for me.” Ranni’s voice was faltering, fearful.

“Yeah,” was the Tarnished’s answer, “maybe maybe it is. All I’ve got to guide me is what I feel and what I believe. I’ve seen what the Golden Order has done. I waded through the lakes of rot and fought a fucking alien for you. I have seen this world. I've seen what you've done, what Marika has done- all of it.”

“I- I get that I’m new here, I don’t have a history or a name or whatever but I’m gonna ask you,” The Tarnished reached an hand out, one final offering, “to trust me. Come with me, like you are now, or in your smaller form. See this world with me. We can still do good here, still fix some of the things that are broken.”

“Your quest-”

“My quest isn’t exactly on a time limit,” The Tarnished said, “and I’m still going to need every artifact and bit of strength I can drag out of the wilds to take the capital. As much as I love running from Noxians and giant metal balls with you, I figure it’ll be more fun to go see the real world.”

Ranni was silent for a long few moments. Long enough to strike the Tarnished with fear that she would leave again, or give up on their quest.

“I am undeserving of someone such as you.” She said, “if you believe, truly, then I will put my faith in you once more.”

“Then let's go,” the Tarnished stood, taking one of Ranni's hands, "let's go see this world."

Chapter Text

Ranni could feel a cold emptiness, settled into her heart. Blaidd had been her brother for more than a century. She had not imagined her plans and plots could lead to his death. She had been so certain the Two Fingers lost any grip on him, so certain he could live free of her.

“Lady…” The Tarnished’s voice was strained, worried. Ranni looked up- she had returned to her doll and its position at his hip, looking ahead. To great gouts of black flame, clinging around a kneeling troll.

“So we must face one last tragedy,” Ranni said, her voice breaking. The Tarnished did not slow their approach, not until they were before Iji’s corpse. His helm was placed on the anvil behind him, a trio of dead Black Knives before him. Ranni allowed herself to flow out of the doll, taking her true, spectral form before Iji, bowing her head.

“I had almost forgotten thy face, dear Iji,” she said, “thy deeds… I-”

She could not cry, as a specter, nor as a doll. No matter how she wished too, no matter how deep the pain, she simply could not. She dearly wished she had something, some way to vent what she felt, instead of feeling it boil within her, until she felt it would tear her skin.

“Ranni,” The Tarnished reached out, attempting to take her hand, offer her some comfort. He only succeeded in disrupting her spectral form for a moment.

“I am afraid, dear Tarnished, that this form is naught more than a lie. A memory of what once was.” Ranni said, “the only one with the knowledge to make them anew is long lost to the world.”

She could see a boiling anger in his eyes and the way he kept reaching for his sword and pulling back. “Do trolls…. Do they get buried?” he finally asked.

“No,” Ranni had to pause, to go over the vast wealth of knowledge she had read and tossed away somewhere in her past, “they prefer to be left as the Giants had.”

The Tarnished reached down, picking up the fragments of one of the assassin’s black blades. “Be weary,” Ranni warned, “those blades… they were made from fragments stolen from destined death. They are perhaps the only things left in this world that could end thee.”

The Tarnished considered the blade, before returning it to the ground. “So it’s just us,” he said, “the last of the dream.”

They left Iji by his forge, his helm left at his side as one final tribute. Ranni did not understand the Tarnished’s goal. They rode north together, passing through the Carian’s old haunts with little comment, and when old Adula challenged them at the gates of her rise, Ranni dismissed her, insisting the Tarnished had the right to pass.

She had not seen the Tarnished’s abode before, the little bunches of plants and strange glowing rocks.

“Thy hath made this rise thine home in these months, then?’ she asked.

“Yeah,” the Tarnished paused a moment, shuffling through papers, “It’s safe, got walls between me and the wind. And it was close to- er…. Close to the action.”

Ranni raised an eyebrows. “My rise is perhaps as far away from Radahn as thee could get. In fact, it has been far from everywhere thou has fought.”

“It's- I just like it here.” The Tarnished, Ranni had noted, did not know how to talk to people. He was quite like her in that, both so capable in the field, facing down demons and monsters. Yet when it came to this, to admitting that he had wanted to stay close to her, or what the Dark Moon Ring really meant, neither of them could quite find the words.

“Tarnished, I,” she paused a moment, staring down into the ring the Tarnished had placed upon her finger, “I do not wish to spend the rest of my days in the Lands Between hiding from this. The sword, the ring….”

“They’re oaths,” the Tarnished finished for her.

“In better times I would have given the sword to thee many years from now, and the ring thou would have made thyself,” Ranni said, “we would have time and freedom to explore what it is between us.”

“I do not wish for thou to feel anchored to me,” Ranni held up a hand before the Tarnished could protest, though he very nearly ignored her, “before thou say anything more, I want thee to know what it is I intend to do. The path thou will walk, if we are to go together.”

Ranni sat on the cold stone beneath her, and the Tarnished followed, laying his greatsword across his lap. “The Greater Will seeks to protect this land by controlling it. When there are things it can’t control, it seeks to destroy them. I seek to protect this world all the same, from beyond this world. My order will be one of the cold moon and stars. A world of uncertainty, and fear. One where the people’s of the Lands Between are able to choose for themselves.”

“For them it will be a fearful time. An uncertain time. For us,” Ranni breathed a long sigh, “a thousand years of isolation. A thousand years away from the Lands Between. The people here may forget about us, or despise us for replacing the Will of a god with the choices of man.”

“It is a selfish thing, for me to want company. To want your company.” Ranni said, “and I know you have already made your decision, I have seen that look in thine eyes before. Still, I want thee to know that the choice is thy own.”

The Tarnished was quite a moment, “I’ll give you my answer once we have the Elden Ring.” They both knew what the answer was. Still, it warmed Ranni’s heart, for him to give her that concession, to know that it would be his choice. “Until then, there are- there are a handful of maps….” The Tarnished stood for only a second, bringing between them a handful of parchment papers, marked with Xes and dots and all manner of things.

Ranni scooted herself closer to him, and for a moment she allowed herself to imagine they were normal. Two real people, plotting some great adventure through the Lands Between. They would laugh, and eat roasted fruits, seeing the land at their leisure.

“...and we can walk the ravine for a long while without dealing with them. It can be beautiful down there, I figured, you might like it,” and even as they were, the Tarnished was still trying to give her that. Perhaps unknowing, perhaps by accident.

“Tarnished,” Ranni interrupted him, reaching across the maps, frowning as her hands passed through his. She pulled back a moment, pausing as the Tarnished looked to her, “thank you.” she finally said, “for this. For all of it.”

Chapter Text

“On thy left, Tarnished,” there were many reasons the Tarnished was thankful for the little doll at his hip. She was company, on a very lonely journey, someone he could turn to when he faced magical puzzles or he had to look for old ruins. Right now, though, he was thankful for a second set of eyes.

He rolled under the glintstone bolt, cursing as the noble disappeared once more, cursing as his swipes of the Dark Moon Greatsword passed through nothing but air. “How am I supposed to kill these things?” He yelped as a second bolt tore into his leg, and had to roll under a third, taking cover behind a low stone wall.

“Does thou have a torch, Tarnished?” Ranni asked, “invisibility magics cannot adapt to the light fire gives off.”

“Are you-” the Tarnished paused a moment, rummaging through the seemingly bottomless sack at his back, producing a torch and lighting it with a quick fire incantation, “are you serious? Fire, that's it?”

“Indeed,” Ranni said, and Tarnished could hear the sly little half smile she used when the Tarnished had not learned something so obvious. “How long hath thee been avoiding this place?”

“I do not want to talk about it.” At least now, armed with torch and sword, he made short work of the nobles, leaving him with just the sword traps to dodge. They were easy enough- until one brought a great stone arch down, nearly crushing him in the process.

“Fucking rocks,” The Tarnished said, after rolling from them, panting and taking a moment to thank the grace for his skull not being caved in.

Ranni had been unnaturally silent. She wasn’t the most talkative, sure, but usually some brush with death or intense fight would get something out of her. “Are you okay, down there?” he asked, “not like, suffocating under a flask or something?”

That drew a short sigh from Ranni, “I would like to sit next to thee a moment.” she said. The Tarnished settled her on the rocks that had almost killed him, sitting on the stone floor in front of her. It meant that they were eye level with each other, at least, but the Tarnished could not help but find the mini Ranni cute, as she sat there brooding over the rubble.

“This place,” Ranni began, Kingsrealm. It was a hunting lodge for my father. Built just outside our manor so he could avoid the politics of home. He would take us here from time to time, try to bond with us without retainers and maids spying.”

“You must uh…” The Tarnished took a moment to pick his words carefully, “It must be strange, then. Seeing it in ruins.”

“When my father left my mother for Marika, left for the power of the Elden Lord, it broke her. I swore to myself if I ever became queen, if I ever had the power, I would see this place leveled. There was a tower,” she pointed with a small hand to the southernmost portion of the ruins, “it was nearly four stories tall. Before I took the path of frost, my father allowed me to study the stars from there. It was the last place I saw him from.”

“I still hate this place. Hate everything it meant to my father. I hate that it was here he told my mother he was leaving us.” she stared into the air the tower must once have occupied, her eyes seeing something far beyond the ruins that were, “and yet, I would give anything to see it back. To see those nobles thou hath slain as they were in life. Is that strange, Tarnished?”

The Tarnished looked to the walls, wondered what some of the stains were. Bile, or grime. Perhaps spilled blood or drink, a thousand things that happened and been forced to repeat, an endless cycle without change. “It was the last time the world really made sense,” he said, “you were still in your body, your family was still together. It makes sense, to miss the last little bit of normalcy you had.”

Ranni stewed over that for a moment, before deciding she would rather change the subject than really think about it. “There is only one place left I can imagine treasure could be stashed away in. There is an old wine cellar, I think hidden by some magics now.”

“Right,” the Tarnished stood and stretched himself out, “back in the pouch then, unless you want to lead me there on my shoulder.”

They’d tried it once before. Ranni had quickly discovered balancing on a man even as well built as he too difficult. Instead she agreed once more to be placed at his side, and guided him to what seemed to be a solid stone floor. Even stepping on it or plunging the torch into it elicited no change.

“Are you sure?” The Tarnished asked.

“Strike the illusion, and it will dissipate.”

The Tarnished followed her orders, plunging his greatsword into the stone. He nearly found himself rolling the whole length of the staircase down, when the illusion indeed did dissipate. The drop down sent him stumbling, thankfully upwards, and against a steadying wall.

“By the Grace,” the Tarnished breathed. He took a moment to peer into the darkness, feeling something lurking there. “I don’t suppose this is going to be an easy one.”

“No, I dare say thou will face an enemy of some strength.” Ranni said, make thyself ready.”

The Tarnished paused at a rusted, beaten door, reaching out to trace what looked to be a rusted puncture. “Something poked through the other side of this door. A rapier I think,” he paused, “and wood doesn’t rust.”

“The last visitor to this dark place did not leave.” Ranni said.

The Tarnished threw the door open, stepping into a long room, empty save for a handful of skeletons pushed against the walls. “I swear if this is some invisible-” The Tarnished was lucky, his enemy was not, in fact, invisible. It was, however, a many armed beast, snarling and spitting and screaming at him as it lunged, too fast for the Tarnished to even summon Ranni’s wolves to his aid.

The Tarnished was quite pleased with his first few strikes, ducking and rolling under its first lunge and stabbing into its back. And then the bastard pulled itself into the ground.

“Are you serious?” The Tarnished spun on heel, searching for the great beast, “where the fuck did it go?”

The Tarnished had learned long ago to listen to his instincts, so when he heard a strange gurgling and his body told him to roll, he rolled. The cone of poison splashed \harmlessly to his side, and the Tarnished could watch it burn its way into the stone.

The Tarnished turned to the acid’s source, almost panicking as he watched it lunge towards him, barely dodging out of the way of its blows, not even able to retaliate in kind. Once he had settled himself again, he took only a single swipe before the beast once more burrowed into the ground.

It should have been the same this time, the gurgle and the easy role. But the Tarnished dodged the wrong way, and found himself pressed against a wall, eyes widening as he watched the beast spat acid at him.

There were wounds that only the Tarnished could know the pain of. No person could know what it felt like to have their heart punctured- they’d be dead before they could tell anyone else. Eye wounds were much the same. For most folk, if an enemy gouged their eyes out, they were dead. The Tarnished had lost his eyes twice before this. It hurt, badly, but at least they were usually followed by a swift death. Acid pouring over his eyes was something else.

It was like they were on fire, and no amount of screaming or rolling would save them. It did save him, however, he could hear the beast crashing against the wall, scrabbling at it and slowing. Perhaps it was dazed, perhaps merely playing with its food. “Tarnished!” he could hear Ranni’s little yell, grimacing as he did. Dying was bad, didn’t get much worse. Ranni’s desperate yells, feeling her fear at his side- that was one of the few things that could.

He tried to say something, tried to apologize for what they were about to go through, but Ranni beat him to it. “In front of you, Tarnished,” it was useless. Without eyes, even knowing when and where the thing would attack would do him little good. He could hear it rushing him, “Tarnished!”

And then he could feel something, a cold hand, gripping the sword with him, lifting it and delivering a decisive strike. The Tarnished heard it die, could feel the beast fade into runes. “Tarnished?” Ranni asked quietly.

“I- can drag the crimson flask out of that pouch?’ The Tarnished tried to keep the pain out of his voice. He failed miserably, of course, but neither of them commented on it. “Here, bring me your hand,” the Tarnished reach to his side, bumping the floor once before he managed to find Ranni and his flask. The relief it brough, and the return of his sense of sight was a relief, even if all he saw was the dark of the cave.

“That was…” The Tarnished took a long deep breath, replacing Ranni with his flask in the pouch, placing her on the ground next to him, “thank you, for that.”

“For what?” Ranni’s question gave him pause.

“You- your hand, I felt it. You guided my sword. I figured since you could see, you helped me kill it.”

“Tarnished,” Ranni said, “as much as I would like to, I cannot touch anything, much less a sword. Not in any way that matters.”

“But I felt it,” the Tarnished started.

“Tarnished, I assure thee, if I could guide thy sword, if we could touch, we would. I would not be in this cursed doll.”

There was some bitterness there, enough to give the Tarnished pause. “Ranni, are you- are you okay?” He asked, “is there something more to this?”

Ranni’s laugh was dry, “Tarnished, does thou know what thou do to me?” she asked, “for a hundred years I had not even thought about my sense of touch. I did not imagine I could miss it.”

“I’m-”

“Do not apologize, Tarnished,” Ranni cut him off, “traveling at thy side… it has made me feel more in a few weeks than I have in so many years. I feel real for the first time in so many more. I have… I want to experience this world with you. You feel the rain and snow and the leaves of trees with you. I want to feel, Tarnished.”

“It will not be until we are long gone from this world that I will be able to again. And then another thousand years before we can experience this world together once more.”

“And I will wait gladly.” Ranni said, turning from the Tarnished, “I can think of nothing I want more than to… to feel again.”

“Ranni,” the Tarnished was frowning now, realizing how much time he was wasting, how much longer he was making her wait.

“Do not rush this,” Ranni warned him, “I want this. I want the adventure, I want to see this world as it is. I want to spend this time with you.”

“Okay,” the Tarnished took a long breath, steading himself, “alright, lets keep going.” He turned deeper into the cellar, eyeing another door at the far end of the hall. “Lets see what this thing was guarding.

He was already plotting. Perhaps a bit of relaxation would do them good, give them some time to talk and laugh and be at peace for the first time in who knows how long.

Chapter Text

Ranni had not been to the bottom of the Ravine in all her life. She had seen its top before, of course. The great scar on the land, something she had always detested. It had made travel difficult, forced her father to spend weeks to survey the whole of Liurnia. It made visits to the study hall a chore, and when she had found her mentor made traveling to her woods difficult at best, and an impossibility at worst.

With the Tarnished, though, it was a thing of mystery. “Selen told me the river cut it out,” he told her, “after like…. A thousand years. Kinda impressive, for a river so small.”

He was kneeling in it, the little trickle of the river barely reaching his ankles, the boots he wore protecting himself from the cold of the water. She was in her spectral form, floating just above the water, watching as the Tarnished washed his hands of the Land Squirts poison.

He had not killed them. “I feel bad, you know,” He had told her, ”They’re not doing anything bad, just living their life. If I spook them, that's on me.”

Now they were in a deeper section of the river, though still pitiful. Little fish and crayfish swam in the slow current, eating at river grass and insects. The Tarnished disturbed them, laughing as they skittered away. He held up a small prawn to show Ranni, telling her stories of the greater ones down the river, cursing as it pinched him and dove back into the river.

Ranni could not hold back her laughter, doubly so when she saw the Tarnished’s flush. “Oh how the demigods must tremble, and the guardians of the ring fear, of this great Tarnished,” she said, “if only they knew his one true weakness- prawns!”

And then the Tarnished was laughing, splashing away from a trio of crawfish in mock fear. Ranni imagined they just have felt like gods in that moment, with such a great beast on its heels.

“There’s a place up ahead I want to camp at.” the Tarnished said, recovered from his flight. “A little patch of land we can spend the night at. The sky can be quite pretty from down here. Like a little slice of the stars.”

Beyond sand squirts but just before the Ravine opened to the lake of Liurnia, there ere a few scraggly bushes growing out of the side of the ravine, and a narrow strip of rocky ground poking up out of the river. It was there the Tarnished settled as the sun dipped out of their view and the ravine darkened and cooled.

“I see you have found a use for your collection of rocks,” Ranni said, watching the Tarnished set a collection of sanctuary stones together, their gentle warmth a poor replacement for the sun. Or so Ranni imagined, she could feel naught but the cool of the night.

“They all have uses,” the Tarnished insisted. “One of these days we’re going to find a maze or a labyrinth or something, and you’re going to thank your lucky stars I have a pouch full of glowing glass.”

The Tarnished collected many strange things. Ranni could at least imagine a use for the mushrooms, or the plants, but she had never understood his penchant for the seemingly random rocks. She’d watched him many times pick out an otherwise boring and simple rock from amongst many and slip it into his bag. She’d asked him about it once, and learned of his collection. Ruin fragments, sanctuary stones, three kinds of colored glass. Strange things for a warrior to hold on to, but he swore he would find a use for them one day.

“I imagine I will,” Ranni said, “if that day ever comes.”

The Tarnished told her of Caelid while they waited. He told her of the people cursed to the rot, unable to die and unable to cure themselves from it. The giant dogs and birds, the army that to this day served Radahn.

“They are good people,” he told her, “even if a little trigger happy. Only folk trying to burn out the scarlet rot still. They’re not managing it too well, but they’re trying.”

“Radahn’s men loved him.” Ranni told him, “before his battle with Malenia, he could have been Elden Lord. He was… he was a good man, before it all.”

The Tarnished was quiet for a moment, “the Shattering made a lot of good men monsters,” he said, “and bad men even worse.”

They were quiet a long moment, and the Tarnished took that as a sign to move on from reminiscing over a bloody past. Instead, he settled himself to eating jerky and wondering aloud if the water was clean enough to drink.

“I do not imagine you want to discover what dysentery is,” Ranni told him, “do your flasks not carry normal water?”

“The one thing the Grace didn’t give me,” he told her, “a bag that can store anything, a flask that can remake flesh and bone, but a nice canteen? Nah, that's out of the question.” he pulled from his bag a crudely made skin flask, grimacing as he listened to the water within swirl about. “Not a lot left. I’m going to have to boil more soon.”

“Your body still thirsts, then?” Ranni asked.

“I don’t really know,” was the answer, “I get the feeling of being thirsty. But I don’t know if I actually need it. Never tried killing myself that way.”

Ranni considered that, watching him drink down the last of his water. “The life of a Tarnished, I cannot decide if its a blessing or a curse.”

The Tarnished did not answer her, but by the look he gave her, she imagined he agreed.

By the time night fell, the Tarnished had returned his home made canteen to his bag and spread a handful of sanctuary stones around them, providing the pair a low, comforting light. “Alright,” he said, standing and walking to the center of the river, “lets walk a little.”

Ranni stood with him, joining his walk back the way they had come. It was peaceful, and as the Tarnished had said, looking up was like looking at a narrow slice of the sky, the light of the moon reflecting off the upper edges of the Ravine. “I stayed here for a week, first time I saw this,” the Tarnished said, “Didn’t help that I got my ass beat by a Cuckoo knight, but its a beautiful place. And pretty safe from everything.”

“A place of rest, far from the ruins and people of the above world.” Ranni said. They walked in silence for a long moment. Ranni… she enjoyed it. Enjoyed the quiet, the comforting presence of the Tarnished next to her. She could feel the want again, gnawing at the back of her mind. Ever since he’d claimed to have felt her guide him, it had been there. Perhaps it had always been, but weaker, easy to ignore. Now though, now that she wanted to explore what she and the Tarnished were, it was there. She wanted to take his hand, to feel his hair. To ride with him, and feel the wind and water and what great and terrible things were in this land with him.

It was a dangerous thing to want. Ranni knew better than anyone, her great desire to free herself had kicked off the Shattering and everything that had followed.

“Ranni,” there was excitement in the Tarnished’s voice, enough to bring her forwards from her thoughts. He was pointing up, to the upper edges of the Ravine. A pack of spirit jellies were descending on them, their gentle, white light following them.

“I’ve seen them around a few times,” the Tarnished said, “they like wandering at night. Didn’t expect them to join us though.”

Ranni knew what they were, of course. Every soul in the Lands Between knew what they were. But she had never seen them in person. Always from the pages of a book or the stories of a squire.

“They’re beautiful,” she said as they descended on them.

“Yeah,” the Tarnished said, eyes narrowing, “I’ve never seen them so… interested.”

Indeed they were interested, forming a loose circle around the pair, little tentacles reaching out to brush against the Tarnished and Ranni. She reached out to meet them, and startled back when she felt them.

“Can you-” the Tarnished started, but trailed off when Ranni stepped forwards, each of her four arms reaching out for one of the spirit jellies, brushing against tentacles and glowing bells.

She laughed, “they are soft,” she said, “I have not… I have not felt in so long.”

“I guess you’re both spirits?” The Tarnished said, more of a question than a statement. “Or some other weird thing. I can touch them but they usually get very red when I do.”

Ranni stepped back, giggling as she had not done in so long when one of the Jellies followed her, brushing up against the Tarnished as it did so. He flinched back, relaxing when it did not react to his touch.

“They’re probably the nicest things around,” he said, “I’m glad they’re as nice to you as they are to me.”

The spirit jellies did not stay for long. The circle around them slowly floated off, following the ravine towards the lake itself. The one that had followed her, that allowed Ranni to feel its bell stayed a few moments longer, even reaching out a friendly tentacle to the Tarnished before floating off.

“Ranni,” the Tarnished said. Ranni turned to him, still lit in the light of the jellies. There was something in his eyes, something that would have made her blush, had she a true body. “You’re beautiful.”

“Tarnished…” Ranni knew what it was in his eyes. She had felt it so often in the past weeks, had grown so accustomed to the feeling. She saw him then, perhaps more than she had ever before. Not a knight, come to save her, or a servant to a greater cause. She saw what he was- a man, perhaps the loneliest in all the lands, one who had chosen his companion, who was willing to risk the pain of death and the fear of the unknown path laid out before him.

She knew he saw her to. Saw beyond the four arms and blue skin, the grand designs. He saw the person she was, saw the dreams and the fears. Saw what she was, under the frosted shell. Perhaps he was the only person who could, the only person who she had adventured with, had experienced the cold grip of true death with. Had experienced a thousand things she had long ago forgotten.

“Tarnished, how hath thou stolen a heart I do not have.”

Chapter Text

The Tarnished had not expected that night. He’d hoped, of course, that it would go well. That Ranni would enjoy the little slice of the sky and the sound of the water beneath them. He could not have anticipated the spirit jellies, and the way Ranni looked, the joy in feeling for the first time in so long. The Tarnished would not tell her- he had a feeling she would find a way to wrap it into some sort of problem or attempt to dissuade him somehow- but he would do nearly anything to see that again.

The Tarnished considered staying in the valley, or chasing after the Jellies for another night. But they could not dally forever, though. The next day saw them cutting a path through the lake, slaying great lobsters and marionette soldiers. It was a great relief to have a second set of eyes with him, one that could call out warnings. She was in her spectral form, not stashed at his side, and it made her far more useful. Twice she’d saved him from lurking crustaceans, calling them out as they burrowed upwards, out of the mud. The pair settled on an island for their morning meal. The Tarnished’s morning meal, at least.

“Do you know what that was?” The Tarnished was looking to a great stone rise, much like Ranni’s own. He was considering exploring it now that he had a bit of time. “Last time I tried it the door told me I had to kill three wise beasts and I kinda just… left it.”

“It is…. It was the rise of a great astrologer. Tetsu.” Ranni said, “I imagine he sealed it, ages ago.”

“Do you think there's anything worthwhile inside?” the Tarnished asked.

“There are a great many star charts and books of ancient lore- perhaps irreplaceable tomes of knowledge.” Ranni said, “for thy purposes, however, I doubt there is anything worthwhile.”

The Tarnished did not stay there for long. “There’s a cave on the western side of the academy.” He told Ranni.

“The crystalline cave,” Ranni said, “students used to go there to practice earthen magics.”

“A friend of a friend told me there was a spell to be found down here.” The Tarnished said, “and some beast guarding it.”

They spoke little on the journey over. Ranni’s eyes were affixed to the academy above, and the Tarnished focused on the petty enemies below. It was not until they were in the caves that they spoke again.

“This is the first cave that hasn’t been lit by some weird magic stuff.” The Tarnished said, freeing his torch from his bag and lighting it, “and all this crystal too, I figured I’d actually be able to see.”

“In the days before, the cave would have been lit by magics cast by students.” Ranni said, “I imagine there are not many left.”

It took all of three minutes for the Tarnished to prove her wrong, cursing and trolling under blasts of glintstone. He struck them down quickly, cursing the little grazes he had collected before he could close the distance.

“How can they be in this dark?” Ranni asked, her spectral form examining one of the bodies, “their masks do not grant them vision in the dark.”

“I don’t know,” the Tarnished said, lifting the mask off of one. They were young, perhaps not even an adult. He stared down at it, shuddering. The only other time he could remember fighting someone so young had been Renala. And that fight- the Tarnished had nearly refused it.

“He would not even be in his second year,” Ranni said, “to wield those sorceries at this age- he should be in classes at the university, tutored by the greats. Not- not in this damned cave.”

She was angry now, and the Tarnished reached for her, before remembering there was little physical comfort he could offer. “That’s… that’s kinda the way of the world right now,” he said, “nothings right. I don’t think he’d be doing much better up above, either. The Academy is full of dead things and mages that kill on sight.”

Ranni was quiet for a long while after, as the Tarnished ventured further into the cave. There were many more curses from the Tarnished as he cut his way through the mages that lurked in the darkness, until he came before a sealed door. They could both feel it- a great power lay beyond it. For the Tarnished it was something to fear, another enemy that would test his might.

For Ranni, though, it seemed to be different. “Hold, Tarnished,” she said, examining the seal in front of them. “The creatures you sense- they are constructs of my mothers. Crystalains, servants of mages and house Caria.”

“Ranni,” the Tarnished paused, “are you sure? Plenty of mages and former servants of House Caria have tried killing me.”

“I am certain.” Ranni said, “they will obey a blood relative of their maker. They may be great boons to our cause.”

“Alright so, what, we just open the door?” The Tarnished asked. “Knock and see if anyone is awake?”

“I will present myself to them and command them to join us.” Ranni said.

“Simple as,” the Tarnished said, with a hint of nervousness.

“Tarnished,” Ranni paused a moment, turning to him, “I am certain. I ask only that thou trust me.”

“Sure,” the Tarnished said, settling himself, “alright, lets make some friends.”

He forced the seal, stepping into a wide room, a pair of crystalline figures standing stock still in the middle. They reacted to him, one bearing a staff the other a spear.

The Tarnished stepped back, sword down, hoping to avoid provoking them. Ranni, on the other hand, stepped forwards, folding out one of her four hands. “Crystalline guardians of this cave, I am Ranni, daughter of Queen Renala. I have come to free you of this place and call upon your service to house Caria once more.”

The Tarnished’s mistake was not keeping his eyes on the Crystallines. He was watching Ranni, smiling as he saw her lower set of arms clasped behind her back. It was a strange sort of woman, four arms and skin of porcelain. A beautiful sort.

The first clintstone shard pierced him in the leg- a great gash at his calf. It was deep enough that he doubted his ability to roll- which wasn’t much of a concern, not when the spear wielder leapt through Ranni, brushing her aside as though she was naught but air. As he was skewered, the Tarnished imagined that’s what it probably was.

“Tarnished!” He could hear Ranni yell for him, saw her turn. But it was all a blur, and he was being driven down, eyes staring to the ceiling, unfocused.

The spear fell once more, and brought with it the darkness of another death. He was there for a few short moments. These brief respites of death had grown shorter, now that Ranni was with him. It felt like the Grace wanted him gone, were trying to force him out.

He woke at the site of Grace just inside the cave, Ranni’s spectral form seated across from him. There was a dark look in her eyes, and she allowed them to sit in silence for a long few minutes.

“Hey,” the Tarnished started, “I guess they’re not really interested in the whole friendship thing.”

“I led thee to thine death,” Ranni said, “once again.”

“It's a part of the job.” was the Tarnished’s answer. “If there's a chance to get some help, I’d rather risk the death than not.”

“You are afraid of death,” Ranni said, “I forced one upon you.”

The Tarnished wanted to reassure her, but he had a feeling there was something more to this. A deeper wound this had only reminded her of. “They do not recognize me as of house Caria I think. And why should they? My mother had only just begun to recover when I instigated the Night of Black Knives. My death drove her into the madness that now consumes her.”

“And everything that has come after… How many Carians have died, because of the Shattering? How many mages and students have been driven to madness because of what I have done.” She turned to the Tarnished, “I… Tarnished, may I make a request of thee?”

“Of course.” The Tarnished answered.

“May we… may we leave this place?” Ranni asked, “leave this academy behind us. Travel elsewhere for a time.”

The Tarnished nodded, “yeah, there's a bunch of places we can go. Most of them aren’t as pretty but…”

“It is not beauty I seek right now,” Ranni assured him. “As long as we can leave this cursed academy behind.”

Chapter Text

Ranni did not speak on their path south, nor did she take her spectral form. Without the sword and doll anchoring her, Ranni’s spirit may have drifted into the night to brood. Instead her doll sat lifeless in its pouch, and even the Dark Moon Greatsword seemed dull.

She knew they were traveling through the Stormveil by the way the air changed. She could taste the lightning in the air, felt the pressure the storms brought. She was not paying attention to what the Tarnished was doing, not even when his rolls and shouts jostled her doll.

It was not until the darkness of death took them that Ranni refocused on the real world. They were just inside the castle. Ranni recognized it as the place where Godfrey had held his court and grafted many Tarnished and soldiers to himself.

“Tarnished,” she started, before remembering he would be in a drowse for a minute more. Instead she looked to him. It was morning, she realized, the sun casting long low shadows as it began its cycle. The Tarnished cut a striking figure, the noble blues of his hood and his cuckoo surcoat matched well enough, and they framed his build well. Short and little, black gray hair allowed to grow long and wild. She wondered if he had cut it since coming to the lands between. She wondered many things about her Tarnished.

She called him that, in her head. Her Tarnished, her champion. It was true, in a way. The Tarnished was her champion, someone who had placed his trust in her. He had placed his future in her hands, willingly yielded so many lives to her cause.

She was still watching him when he returned to the world. He twitched once, hand reaching to the sword at his side before he settled himself, shrinking away from the fire. “Tarnished,” Ranni took her spectral form at his side, “I… apologize. For my absence. I needed time to think.”

“Its- its fine,” The Tarnished said, though he was more focused on his forearm, turning it over and staring at the flesh and bone there, staring at it as though he expected something else.

“Can I ask what happened?’ Ranni asked, “I am afraid my mind was elsewhere.”

“It's nothing.” The Tarnished said. Far too quickly to fool even the densest of fools. He could tell, Ranni guessed, because the Tarnished took a breath and said, “it was just a stupid mistake. Won’t happen again.”

Ranni wanted to press further, to ask more. But he had permitted her her privacy and brooding with no comment. She could do the same.

Instead she returned to his side, watching for the Tarnished as he cut his way through the castle. He was more cautious than she was used to, creeping around legions of enemies instead of cutting though them, simply running where he could have fought. She did not comment on it- indeed, they spoke little, and it was not until they had reached the Stormgate and the narrow space where neither knights nor trolls watched that they truly said anything.

“What happened to the uh- the ghost you?’ The Tarnished asked, “you know, she was kinda hanging off of your body for a while.”

Ranni considered him a moment, “I… do not know.” She focused for a moment, recalling her former face, her former body.

“Oh,” the Tarnished’s little surprised sound told her she had called it back to her side.

“It is a memory of what I once was.” Ranni said. “I think… I have grown comfortable in this body. This form,” she looked down, to the four arms and white dress, the blue skin, “strangely enough, it is mine now. It is who I am, I think. The Ranni that was is a fading memory. This one is what I am now.”

The Tarnished nodded, pausing for a moment, “I- do you want to hear about it?” The Tarnished asked, “my most recent… you know. My death. I should probably tell you.”

His words were halting and unsure, and Ranni allowed them to sit for a long few moments before she spoke, picking over her words with care.

“If it does not bring pain,” she said, “and if it is thy wish to speak of it, I would like to listen.”

The Tarnished nodded, “yeah its… It was fire. Not- you know, magic or anything. One of Godricks soldiers doused me in oil and used one of their flamethrowers to light me.” Ranni winced in sympathetic pain. “I should have been more careful, I guess. I just… I tried rolling, and ripping of my clothes, but nothing worked. I saw,” Ranni saw him stare into the Grace, and knew he was seeing something far beyond it. “I’ve never died like that. Guess there is a first time for everything.”

“Hath thy… recovered from that ordeal?” Ranni hated that she could not find the worlds, that she could offer only more questions. But the Tarnished did not seem to mind. Or perhaps he was in that space, where his body was locked into completing a task and he simply answered whatever he was asked.

“No,” that she had not expected. The Tarnished was strong. His deaths shook him, yes, but he had always recovered, always pushed on. “I can still feel it. When i see my hands for a second I can see it.”

“It's not real, I know. Doesn’t really help.” He looked so sad, so beaten. Just another burden he would have to bear, the memory of fire burning the life from him. Ranni could feel the need to do something. To reach out, to hold this great warrior and ward off the fire he saw.

Perhaps she could not touch him, but there was something she could do. “Tarnished, your hands,” she said, “your hands.” The Tarnished focused on her for the first time since he had begun speaking on the fire. “Please,” Ranni added.

The Tarnished obeyed, holding his hands out to her. She reached for him, her bottom set of hands phasing through his, her top settling just above his own. She took a long, slow breath, calling into herself the power of her frost magics and forcing it into the world, filling the space around her and the Tarnished with her own aura. It was cold, soothing. When she had a body, she would use it when her body took a blow to chill the bump and speed along the recovery.

The Tarnished smiled as he felt the aura, taking a deep breath of the chilled air. “I do not imagine that I can banish the memory from your mind,” Ranni said, “but I can provide you with something more comforting to focus on. Something to remind your skin of what it feels to be at peace.”

He was not the only one reveling in this, not the only one relaxing in the comfort of another. She was used to feeling the Tarnished presence, the strength and wit he provided. But something was different here, she could feel in in the roughness of his hands, the callouses he had begun developing many months ago.

“Ranni,” The Tarnished said, his voice focused, “Ranni, I can feel you.”

Ranni took a moment to understand, to realize that her hands had settled around his, that she could really feel his fingers and palm and- and then her hands phased though his, her shock breaking the moment.

“How?” Ranni asked, eyes wide, attempting once more to take the Tarnished’s hand. She needed it, wanted it. Her hands phased through again, and then a third time.

“How?”

Chapter Text

The Tarnished was perhaps more aware of Ranni than he had ever been. She was constantly at his side, talking, looking, reaching. He preferred this by far to the empty sword and quiet nights. Her cold followed him now, surrounded him. He bore it with him ing fights, felt it chill his wounds and numb his pain.

Still, as much as he enjoyed it, as much as he reveled in it, he could see the frustration in her, he noticed the little reaches, the dozens of times she ‘accidentally’ brushed up against him.

They had spent hours at that campfire. The Tarnished enjoyed that time- it was time to recover, to box up what his last death had felt like and push it far away. It was also an easy excuse to watch Ranni, to see her brow furrow in concentration, to watch her fidget and curse. It would have ben funny, if her aura had not grown progressively colder, until his ears stung and he had to ask Ranni to rest on it.

“Tarnished, I- I want to-” She had paused then, looking at the redness in the Tarnished’s ears and the way his hands were tucked against his side. “I apologize,” she said quickly, and the Tarnished felt her aura retreat into her. “I was too… focused. I apologize.”

“Don’t,” the Tarnished said quickly, “It felt good, for most of it. And I want to, you know,” he flushed and ducked his head a moment, “I want to feel you too. We can try as many times as it takes. Just, you know, we don’t want to freeze ourselves while we do it.”

They spent the next few ways traveling south. The only danger they truly faced was at the Bridge of Sacrifice, where the Tarnished fought his way though the scattered soldiers of Godrick. Tarnished felt bad for them, for a moment. Their lord was vanquished, but this eternal cycle refused to release them.

“The Weeping Peninsula.” Ranni said as they crossed south, “I have never ventured this far south.”

“I’m afraid it's not always going to be this pretty.” the Tarnished said, “We’re headed to Castle Morne.”

“Ah,” Ranni was quiet a moment, “there are many stories of that place. Sad ones, of a hero slain.”

“Yeah, it’s not a very happy place. The Misbegotten have taken the castle, for the most part.” The Tarnished and Ranni were quiet a moment. “I promised the lord of the castle I would get the Sword of Morne back so he could leave his post.”

“A noble goal,” Ranni said, though the Tarnished could tell there was something more nagging at her.

“Do you know something?” the Tarnished asked, “about the castle?”

“I know much of its servants.” Ranni said. “Perhaps the first time I understood what the Greater Will was, when I discovered what they were.”

“What are they?” the Tarnished asked, “I’ve seen a lot of things out here, but nothing quite like them.”

“They are slaves.” Ranni said, her voice cool and harsh. The Tarnished realized she was looking to the minor Erdtree of the peninsula, and knew her anger was directed as something far beyond them. “They are the disposable workforce of the lords of the Greater Will.”

Ranni paused a moment, taking a long breath, “they were people once. Do you know what crime they committed, to be damned to an eternity of slavery and to have their existence twisted by a god far beyond their knowing?”

“”They were heretics, Tarnished.” Ranni said, “Their crime was knowing another god. Some of them did not even go that far- they were merely unlucky enough to come across some ancient relic of the crucible, or to read of it in a tome that had not been burned by the Golden Order’s inquisitors.”

“Many lords used them as laborers or servants of some sort. Castle Morne’s Misbegotten did far more- they farmed and traveled and died for their masters. I imagine there was not much mercy to be had in their hearts.”

“No there was not.” The Tarnished answered. He paused a moment before he continued. “What happens to them after?”He asked. “Once the Order is beyond this world?”

“I do not know.” Ranni said. “I cannot force upon this world a future, nor can I force its people a way to live. What becomes of them is their choice alone. Perhaps for the first time in their existence.”

The Tarnished did not speak more of them, not until they reached the castle proper. “You might want to stick close to me,”The Tarnished said, “Last time I tried this I got skewered before I got halfway through.”

Ranni almost questioned him, but the great whoosh and crunch of a giant pole of an arrow impacting the stone ruins in front of them interrupted her.

“Here we go,” The Tarnished said with a laugh, spurring Torrent forwards. The golem guardian of castle Morne was slow, but it's arrows were gigantic. And there was a long, long way to go before he was at the relative safety of under the golem.

He laughed when the first arrow was well wide, thanking Torrent for his speed and agility. The second nearly took him through the chest, would have had he not nudged Torrent into one of his magical double jumps.

Then they were underneath the golem, and the Tarnished was tearing into it with Ranni’s sword, rolling aside from a slow stomp and tripping the thing by nearly breaking one of its ankle joints. Then it was defeated, dissolving into runes and scrap.

“The lift will take us up,” he told Ranni, craning his neck to look at the high walls of the castle. She reformed next to him, eyes darting between the bloody streaks that coated the ramparts and the hanged men. “So this is the fate of Castle Morne,” she said, “her ramparts painted red and her soldiers slain.”

The Tarnished was silent as they took the lift up, the Dark Moon Greatsword still drawn. The main courtyard drew a sharp breath from Ranni. “I did not realize… how many died here?” She asked. “How many hundreds have been left to rot here?”

“Too many,” was the Tarnished’s only answer. He did not leave more room for discussion, instead charging the pack of Misbegotten. They did not last long- it was only the rotten dogs that gave the Tarnished any trouble, and that was only because he had not expected them to lunge at his back. Even the mad pumpkin did not stand against him well, falling to a combination of spells and great sword swipes.

“That was… impressive, Tarnished.” Ranni said, which drew a short laugh from him.

“I’ve had a lot of practice in this courtyard.” he said, “when I first came here I hadn’t scrounged up any golden seeds. Had to figure out how to do this with one hit of health and one of magic. Taught me to be very efficient.”

He had navigated the long walls before, and was more than able to talk to Ranni as he cut down what few Tarnished remained. “There’s some people up ahead, Morne folk,” the Tarnished said. “They- well, at last check, they want to kill me just as much as the Misbegotten.”

“”Is there anything in these lands sane enough to recognize a losing battle?” Ranni asked, though the Tarnished just laughed that off. “Fortunately for them,” he paused, reaching for his bag and rolling out a map, “I think… yeah. We’re heading back.”

The Tarnished was prone to getting lost, sure, but he’d tried to be more thorough, get lost less. This was one of those times he wound up backtracking, hunding for the right cliff to drop off of. Ranni tried to help, of course, but she knew even less, and was bound close to him.

They did find their cliff eventually, and fought through some of the castle's low beach buildings to reach a gateway.

They both felt the power that came from it, the sense that something dangerous was watching them.

“Alright,” the Tarnished said, stretching his arms, taking a few long breaths, “I got you watching my back, right?” he asked Ranni.

“Of course,” was her answer. The Tarnished smiled, settled himself. Ranni at his back, sword in hand. There was very little that could beat the confidence and skill he had. This foe would fall the same as all the others, and the Sword of Morne would be free of this place.

“Then let's kill ourselves a monster.” And in he went.

Chapter Text

It took the Tarnished three attempts to kill the Leonine Misbegotten. The first he had been caught off guard by the savagery of the swings. The second had been a poorly timed spell and fumbled roll. The Third time, however, the Tarnished put the thing down, cursing and snarling, ripping the sword from its grasp.

There was a long moment of silence, only broken by the ragged breaths of the Tarnished, as the Misbegotten’s body dissolved into runes, and a site of grace sprung from its body.

“I need a bath,” the Tarnished finally said, looking down at himself. He looked to the waves, and then the castle behind them, “and I’d rather not do it here. Come on.”

“Doth thy not wish to restore thyself?” Ranni asked, “thine wounds are not grievous, but surely it would be wise to treat them regardless?”

The Tarnished did not pause, “I’d rather get going before the rest of the Misbegotten decide to move back in,” he said, “let's get this sword to Edgar and leave this place. I’m thinking it's finally time we take the lift.”

The Lands Between would not let them go without a final tragedy, of course. Edgar insisted the Tarnished keep the sword, and swore to protect his daughter. Irina, already dead, a Misbegotten cleaver planted in the ground next to her. Another victim of the cycle.

The Tarnished buried her there, without words or a headstone. “I am… sorry. That it ended this way.” Ranni said quietly. The Tarnished was staring into the earth, silent and still.

“I just…” The Tarnished finally moved, rubbing at his eyes, “Sometimes I wish that first time I died I hadn’t come back. That I was just dead and gone.” He shook his head, turning from the grave.

“I…” Ranni could not say that she understood. She did not know quite what she could say.

“I don’t though, not really.” The Tarnished said, straightening his back, forcing himself forwards, “at the end of the day. Every time I die I’m glad I come back.”

“As am I, Tarnished,” Ranni said. He looked to her then, searching her for something, frowning a moment.

"I am glad, that we are here." He said. "Even with everything else. I'm glad I met you." He hefted the Dark Moon Greatsword as he spoke. "I'd do it all again, to get here."

Ranni knew that here was more than just the place, that he meant more than just the sword. "As would I, Tarnished."

They crossed the bridge of sacrifice without incident, Torrent weaving through soldiers and above arrows with ease, setting them on a course north. They did not speak much until Lake Agheel, the Tarnished’s chosen bathing grounds.

“Thy is quite particular with that armor,” Ranni said, watching him scrub at each plate in his gauntlets. The water foamed around him, mixing with soap to purge the blood and grime from the Tarnished and his armor. Ranni was watching the skies rather than him, though she did keep note of how far along he was.

“I want to look good when I get into a fight. No more of this dark and depressing stuff,” was his answer, "I've been thinking about dye actually. What do you think, a bright green, to really stand out?”

“I may have to consider a new consort,” Ranni said, looking down to him, meeting his laugh with a smile. “I dare say I cannot bring a man dressed in greens to the throne.”

“Okay how about blues,” the Tarnished asked, “Like, white blue? Gray blue? You want to do matching colors, or a little different. I could go for a slightly darker color. Not too dark though. Maybe like- I dunno, cyan? Not baby blue, no one would take me seriously…”

Ranni was not listening to the Tarnished’s rambling about colors, instead looking north. “Tarnished, the dragon-”

“He never comes this far south,” the Tarnished said, “don’t worry. She shows up to torch those dudes and bails, every time.”

“Tarnished, look up.”

He did, to see what had sparked Ranni’s question. The shape of a dragon, diving towards them.

“FUCK ME!” The Tarnished was even faster with no armor to weigh him down. Unfortunately, that meant that when he turned to face the dragon, he was unarmed, with naught but a loincloth to protect him.

“Tarnished, I believe this is the moment to run.” Ranni advised, but when she turned to him, the Tarnished was smiling, his muscles tensing in anticipation.

“I think this is a good time to throw down.” He said, before leaping back towards the dragon.

Ranni did not know its name. She had heard of the dragon of Lake Agheel before from Iji and Blaidd, and understood it to be no match for her Adula, but it was still a dragon. And while the Tarnished was an unparalleled warrior, he was charging it with a fist and a battlecry.

She should not have been surprised he was able to scramble to his sword, though she did feel a twinge of awe watching him weave between swipes of the dragon's claws and great wingbeats intended to knock him back.

Ranni was at his side, phasing through the dragon, shouting, “Hold the sword aloft! Allow the strength of frost to flow through it!”

The Tarnished hesitated a second before he did so, the blade glowing bright blue. “Cool!” The Tarnished had to shout over the sound of the dragon taking off. “What does it do?”

Ranni paused, looking between the sword and the Tarnished. The last time a sword such as this had been given was her mother to Radagon, many years ago. “Ah,” Ranni started, “It…”

“You don’t know?” The Tarnished had been fast enough to pull on a soaking set of trousers, the steel plated leggings still lost to him. He had his flasks, though, and after a brief struggle with the mud, his staff.

“I have never seen it used!” Ranni floated back from the Tarnished as the dragon pounced once more, “the only man to wield it in living memory was my father, and he could never unlock its power.”

“We'll just have to-” the Tarnished cut himself off with a swing of the sword, cutting into the dragon's leg and at the end of its arc unleashing a great crescent of frosted power, nearly severing the dragon's limb from its body.

“That’s certainly something,” the Tarnished had to roll backwards as he spoke, dodging out of the way of an enraged swipe of the talons, coming up to blast it with crystalline comets. “Dragon, if you do not fuck off I swear to whatever gods are listening I will kill you.”

His words only seemed to enrage the dragon, who reared back and began to spew flame, forcing the Tarnished to run, only tu turn and strike with the crescent arcs that erupted from his sword once the dragon had finished with its fire.

The rest of the fight was much the same. The Tarnished would run and dodge whatever the dragon struck with, and in the pauses the dragon took to recover and reorient itself, he would strike with the blade, twice more hoisting it above himself to call upon the faded frost magics.

The Tarnished’s final blow was a charged comet, connecting with the Dragons skull and finally felling the beast. The Tarnished planted the sword in the mud, leaning on it as he took a few deep breaths, steadying himself and recovering from the mad sprints from fire and desperate rolls from claws.

The Tarnished looked to Ranni, shaking his head. “Okay, I think that's a sign. It’s time to get to the capitol.” He said.

“The journey before us… it is longer yet.” Ranni warned. “There are many that yet stand in our way.”

Many that she knew. Rykard, perhaps, mind lost in his own attempt to defy the golden order. The many guardians of Lyndell still, and whatever attempted to bar their way to the Erdtree. Her own father, lost long ago to her.

“And we’re going to beat them.” the Tarnished did not fear them. How could he, after all he had experienced. A thousand terrors, each conquered with blood and sweat. “Whatever it takes, whoever tries to stop us. You and me, we’re going to make it.”

Strangely enough, Ranni believed him.

Chapter Text

The Grand Lift of Dectus. The Tarnished did not know who the statues were supposed to be, nor why such a great elevator had been built. (Why not just a bunch of stairs? He had asked Ranni) He did know, however, that it was his next step. The statues turned, and with a great grinding of stone, he was going up.

It was not a pretty trip, twice the Tarnished was nearly thrown from his feet. The first from a great shuddering jerk as the lift overcame some stone blockage or other fault in itself, and the second from the slam of stone on stone as the lift reached its end point.

High on the Atlus Plateau, the stone warriors who had turned to allow the lift upwards now sat guarding the exit outwards, shields and spears raised. The Tarnished turned back, towards the low stone wall and the sight beyond. All of Liurnia laid out before him- before them, as Ranni had materialized at his side, looking down over her former realm. In the distance they could see her rise, as well as the rest of the manor. Beyond them was the lake, and the ruins of the academy. From so far away it almost looked whole, like a great island sanctuary in the middle of a lake.

“How distance can lie,” He heard Ranni say, and knew she was having the same thought.

“Did you ever come up here, before it all?” The Tarnished asked. “To just look down and see it?”

“Here?” Ranni paused, and the Tarnished could see her deciding how much of an answer to give. “Twice, I think. The first when I was named Empyrean. The second just before the Night of Black Knives.”

“Ah,” the Tarnished had to pause, to pick his words carefully, “they were not… happy trips then?”

“No,” Ranni said, “they were not. When I looked down on my home then, it was not with kind eyes. My home…” She paused for a moment. “From the Atlus Plateau, the armies of Markia marched to conquer the world. Liurnia was no different. Twice we fought the Golden order.” She shook her head, “gods and monsters against glintstone. There were never enough sorcerers to win. Never enough to throw the golden order back. We were allowed to persist, granted an honorable end to the wars. A marriage, and wealth and power. But lapdogs of the Golden Order. Forever servants, custodians of their magic and their lands.”

The Tarnished was quiet a moment, turning south to look to the sea, and the divine tower there. “I imagine this world was beautiful once.” He said, “before everything.” “It was.” Ranni said, “It was beautiful and terrible all the same.”

They stood there, standing and watching the land below them, swaying with the wind. The Tarnished had seen something like it once, standing on a bridge, looking down over Stormveil and Limgrave.

He had felt so alone then, bloodied and fresh off early victories.

Now though, now… it was different. More than being not lonely. There was a warmth there, with Ranni. The moon witch, born to serve the greater Will, destined to defy it. She brought him comfort and aid, a second set of eyes in dark places and a sort of contradictory cold warmth, away from the Grace and the influence of the will.

Ranni was the one to break them from their overlooking of Liurnia. She turned from the cliffs, looking to the warriors and the plateau beyond. “It will not be easy,” she warned the Tarnished, “the soldiers of Leyndell are not as depleted as Caelid or Stormveil. They are well trained and well equipt, and have years of experience behind them.”

“And I,” the Tarnished paused, drawing his Greatsword, twisting it and admiring its cold glint in the sunlight, “have your sword, and your eyes. And, I suppose my mind and magic. I think we’ll get through.”

The Tarnished was not ready for the great golems outside the great lift. They did not twitch nor turn, instead remaining silent sentinels watching the path ahead of them. “They’re not…” The Tarnished trailed off, watching them carefully, hand on his sword and staff.

“No,” Ranni said, “they are the guardians of Dectus. Once a matched pair would guard the lower entrance.”

“Well,” The Tarnished took a bold step towards one, examining the carved stone armor and great weapons they carried, “it's a nice change.”

The road before them was almost peaceful, for a time. No misbegotten or wandering knights harassed them. The Tarnished almost thought it would be easy, that the defenders of Leyndell and Atlus had taken the day off.

Then he took a turn, and saw the great stone stairway, sloping upwards, glinting metal dotting it. He realized, after a moment, that the metal was not decorative, but armored soldiers, clad in metal and bearing great bows and long spears.

“Ah,” he paused, looking up towards the knights, and the stone door behind them.

“Indeed,” Ranni said, “this will be our first test. The many soldiers of Leyndell will not allow us to simply waltz into the city I am afraid.”

“Then let it begin!” The Tarnished was almost laughing as he spoke. No more emaciated soldiers or crazed dogs, or giant hands, or a thousand other monsters. This was soldier versus soldier, a true battle.

“Lightning is a bit cheap, don't you think?” The Tarnished did not know why he asked. The longbows kept firing, great sparking arrows whizzing past him. He had made it halfway to the doors this time. It was almost a dance on the stone, a beautiful thing. He found himself laughing, spinning away from spear thrusts and arrows, his enemies blurs of movement and power.

He did not even see the arrow that killed him, cracking into the back of his skull and destroying his head with a burst of electricity.

He woke in front of the Grace, Ranni sitting cross legged in front of him.

“Thou were laughing,” she said.

“I was having fun,” the Tarnished said, “it was like…”

“Like a dance?” Ranni finished for him, “you said that last time. I can see it,” she paused. “Thy laugh….” She tilted her head, looking the Tarnished up and down. “It is a pretty thing. I wish to hear it more.”

The Tarnished flushed, turning for a half second, then turning back. “I… I’ll try to do it more.” He said. There was not much to laugh at in this cursed land, but the Tarnished figured he could make a bit of an effort. “I should try again,” he said. “See how far up those steps I can get before night falls.”

The day was drawing to a close, and the Tarnished had no love of night fighting, especially after being introduced to the Night Cavalry in Limgrave.

This time, the Tarnished broke through. He managed his space well, flowing from one fight to another, striking down pairs and trios of knights, never drawing the attention of more than three. He was happy, holding his greatsword aloft in victory as he approached the great stone doors, looking to Ranni and blustering over his victory.

And then the two true guards of the gate emerged. Glad in gold and steel, horses trotting into view, barded in the same metals.

“You’re fucking kidding me.” the Tarnished said, stopped stock still. “Two?”

“Ah,” Ranni said, watching the Tree Sentinels, “yes. Two.”

“Is there another way around?” the Tarnished asked.

“I do not know,” was Ranni's answer.

“We are going to find out.” The Tarnished did not bother to keep an eye on the pair, instead beginning the long walk back to the crossroads from which he had emerged four times to challenge the great stone gates.

“Not even once?” Ranni asked.

“Not even once.” He confirmed. Ranni’s laugh was a light thing, soft and short.

The Tarnished decided he wanted to hear it more.

Chapter Text

The road north branched from Bellum highway poorly, the stones that had joined it long worn to dirt and dust. There were more threats there, knights resting on rocks and patrolling footmen to challenge the Tarnished. He was more than capable of dealing with them though, and Ranni often found herself simply pausing in conversation while he dealt with them, resuming when he finished a quick, brutal fight.

“You do not scar, I see,” Ranni continued, after a lone torch man had been slain, “but you do have a pair.”

“I- oh yeah,” the Tarnished paused, reaching to his shoulder, “that is an actual scar. Got it from Margit, way back when I was still trying to get into Stormveil. I survived the fight but I guess those gold daggers were made from something special. Only things that ever gave me a scar.”

“Margit….” Ranni paused, considering the name. “That is a name I have not heard in a very long time.”

“You know them?” the Tarnished asked, only paying half attention, instead focusing on a withered woman, crouched over a chair and a glimmering portal, just ahead of them.

“I have heard the name before,” Ranni said. She glanced between the shattered bridge ahead and the crone before them. “Are you afraid of a finger reader now?”

“Last time I checked you weren’t exactly on good terms with the Grace.” The Tarnished said. “I’d rather not check to see how observant they are. Or how loyal.”

The Tarnished approached carefully, reaching to allow the power of the Grace to follow through him before examining the portal, ignoring the excited mutterings of the finger reader.

“The power of foresight should not be underestimated,” Ranni warned him, “it is worth the risk, to speak with her. What is the worst that could happen?”

“She summons some spirit or demon or turns into a troll.” The Tarnished answered, shrugging at her raised eyebrow, “What? I've seen some weird stuff. It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing.”

Despite his words, the Tarnished did approach her, allowing her to giggle and fawn over his palm, tracing his fingers and speaking of ruins and a great serpent, two paths laid before them.

And then her parting words. Sorrow, cursed, “nothing I haven’t heard before.” The Tarnished told Ranni, but she could not shake the words. It had reminded her of an old servant of her family, one who hated her bitterly now, one who had twice faced the Tarnished.

“Ranni?” The Tarnished’s voice drew her from her thoughts. “You okay?”

“Hm?” She realized that her spectral form had faded, something that often happened when she lost herself in brooding. “Ah, apologies.”

“No need for them,” the Tarnished said, “just wondered what you were thinking about.”

“I was thinking on my family's many servants. “ She realized he was not yet activating the portal, nor resting at the Grace. Instead he had elected to sit at the edge of the shattered bridge, legs dangling over the edge. “Some are not… Marika is not the only one believed to carry a curse.”

“Miriam.” The Tarnished said, nodding, “is that who it is?”

“Indeed.” Ranni answered, “she survived the ruin of Liurnia, and rightfully blames me for all that is lost.”

The Tarnished did not speak for a long moment, fishing a stone from his pouch and casting it as far and away as he could reach. “You know what I think about it right?” he asked, a sort of sad look.

“I…” Ranni thought about it for a moment. “It would help to hear it again.” It was a selfish wish, she thought, to want to be convinced of her innocence. And yet, the Tarnished obliged her.

“You’re not the one who shattered the ring,” he said. “You didn’t march armies across the world or unleash the rot or butcher towns. The Shattering wasn’t you. It was a bunch of warlords and murderers running around because the Golden Order is a shitshow.”

He believed it, too. Ranni could tell. “I wish did,” her voice was small, she could not even tell if he heard her.

“Come here," the Tarnished said, holding out a hand. Ranni almost refused him, wanting to drift into her own thoughts once more.

“Do you want to try again?” he asked, once she had taken a seat next to him (or as close to a seat as a spectral being could take). He was holding a hand out, and with a sad sigh, Ranni watched as her hand faded through his own, before she pulled it back, her fingers hovering just above his.

“You did help me, back there.” the Tarnished said, “guided my sword. I even remember,” he paused, almost laughed, “I remember down in the depths, fighting the shadow. ‘We go together-”

“‘Even in this.’” Ranni finished for him, “I… I am glad to be able to provide some comfort to you. Your trials are formidable.”

“I’ve got company, at least,” he said, “Boc is somewhere around, I think. Alexander, too. And- have you ever met Melina?”

“You have told me of her,” Ranni answered, “but she haunts the Grace, and church grounds.”

“And you don’t particularly like either of those,” The Tarnished said, “she’s… its good, to have people to travel with. It feels good, not being alone.” he had drawn her greatsword, tracing its carvings and the icy grains of the metal. She could almost feel it, feel his fingers ghosting across the blade, tracing ancient symbols even she only knew half the meaning of.

“Ranni.” The Tarnished said after a pause, “who is it.”

She paused, not looking up from the blade, “the sorrow?”

“The only thing I have is people.” he said, “if the finger reader crone is right, if the path I tread is only going to bring more sorrow. Who is going to die?”

“I do not know.” Ranni said, “the misery of this world hangs heavy on all those left. Perhaps it is not a future death that awaits us, but those who did not survive.”

“Maybe.” Ranni could tell he did not believe it. She did not believe it, in truth.

“Tarnished,” Ranni paused, “we will face whatever comes next together. Whatever horrors come or tragedies may strike us, we will endure.”

The Tarnished sighed, standing and rolling his shoulders. “Come on, I want to find something to distract me from this.” he said, “let's go see if we can pick a fight.”

He was examining the portal, preparing to activate it. “You wish to drown your fear in battle?” she asked.

“Can’t let it stop me,” was his answer. “Can’t let it overwhelm me. Gotta keep churning through.”

“Tarnished…” It was not a good way to live, she knew. But she could suggest little else. “Let us go,.”

There was a flash and a hum, and then the pair were gone, leaving the glow of grace and the mumbling crone behind.