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The thorns of guilt pricked through the leather and the linen of the Penitent's gloves. Hands quaked, ever so slightly, soaking the maiden's iron pain. With low, heavy breaths, the Penitent quelled pounding temples and a racing heart. The Prie Dieu offered light in the shivering shadows as the Penitent gripped tighter ‘round the brambl'd blade, stepping ever onward toward the light next to snuff.
The familiar point of helms the red-clad soldiers wore did not escape the Penitent's notice, but the Penitent remained ever-vigilant, leaping and rolling to one side, dodging the witch-burning flames of the Fire Knight's palm. With quick eye and quick arm, the Penitent slashed forward and thrust the guilt-made blade into the belly of the knight, who's blood gargled and splattered over the steely eyes of the blaspheme's mask.
They, too, acted in reverence to their cause, trapped by the very thing they defended so virulently.
This time, their cleansing flames would not get the better of the Penitent One, would not burn flesh beneath armor, would not smoulder lips nor lungs.
A half-broken Prie Dieu lay at the entryway of a grand door. The Penitent One slid the sword between thick waist-tied ropes. A silent canticle and half-pierced palm touched the chipped altarpiece. The candles lit, dimly, weakly, but lit nonetheless.
Here, in the ribcage of the altar, several sacred cores lay on hardened, oldened velvet. The Penitent slotted one into the pommel of the twisted sword, an anatomical heart crowned by gilded thorns. The sword pulsed with an ancient torment, and with it beat life into its edges.
Then, with patience, the Penitent One sat and corded through the knots of the red rosary hung at the waist a selection of charms, silent mysteries of the Erdtree. A coal'd ember wrapped round tight. A gilded nosepiece, next. A half-blackened bead scorched by pheonixal flames. A black, gelatinous glob thick enough to be corded round. A cast-iron ring, as prickled as Guilt. A strange and gleaming stone chipped from a fallen star. An oxidized copper marble embossed with a bird. The very end, red cord was looped through the eye sockets of a baby dove's skull, as small as it was pale.
The door opened.
“Mongrel intruder.”
The Penitent One stilled, stoic yet undeterred. Both hands settled over hilt.
“Thou art Tarnish'd, it seemeth,” mused the voice. The penance of undying, be it by Miracle or by Grace mattered not to the serpent lying under the sacred tree.
“Mother,” the flame-haired beau invoked to the air, a haunting beauty drenched in pitiless duty. “Wouldst thou truly Lordship sanction in one so bereft of light?”
So stood the long-limbed thing, spear in pallor hand.
“Yet… My purpose standeth unchanged.”
Wingéd snakes encircled the Impaler's malformed body, reminiscent of those since cursed by the Ashes of the Miracle. Mired, too, in those ashes seemed this forgotten lord of fire.
“Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death… In the embrace of Messmer's Flame.”