Awakening

First there was pain.

A spear in the gut was what killed him. A slow and painful way to go. The enemy soldier didn't even watch him die; he didn't have the time in the middle of the battle. Gael soon lost sight of him, as people were falling to all sides. Likely he had died there, too.

Red and gold was in his dimming vision as he was bleeding to death. The once proud banner lay in the mud, where the standard bearer had dropped it, only a few feet away. It used to be a welcome sight, but now all it evoked was folly; the follies that had lead him here. Both his and his commander's. The colours blurred as his thoughts were growing hazy, turning into feverish images of home. Regret was the last thing he felt.

Then there was darkness. He had never much thought about what happened after death. It wasn't so bad, really; the absence of light didn't matter too much when there was nothing to see. He was vaguely aware of having these thoughts even as he was drifting through the black, but he didn't question it; there was nothing he could do anymore.

And then the light was back. The world became a dull grey instead of deep black. Gael didn't react: He stared up at the stone ceiling, unmoving. Gradually, he recognized what he was looking at; he became aware that he was lying on his back. Then he realized that he was breathing. But he was dead. Dead didn't breathe.

He thought of clenching his fingers. They responded. That wasn't right; he shouldn't be able to feel this. He closed his eyes again; back to darkness. But now that he had seen real light again, he couldn't just ignore it. Was it real what he had seen? It had looked real. Even now he could feel the cold surface he was lying on. He was cold. Uncomfortably cold. He came to the conclusion that he was still alive. It felt too real to be some form of afterlife. Had he somehow survived?

Gael opened his eyes again. There was the grey ceiling. It didn't tell him anything; it could have been anywhere. He tried to sit up, and after a moment his muscles performed the required actions. He saw a bare room; the walls made of ornament less stone, with no telling what building it belonged to. But the entire place was packed. Gael blinked: There were rows of stretchers, with human figures lying on them. Most of them wore breastplates and helmets, just like he still was. They lay completely still and silent.

"Ah, we've got another one."

Someone in a brown robe approached his corner of the room. Gael blinked again and squinted at a very-alive, dark haired man. With a quill and piece of paper, he looked bizarrely like a clerk. It was such an odd and unexpected thing to see that Gael finally fully accepted that what he was seeing was real. It was impossible that he could have made up this happening to him.

The man stopped at his stretcher. "You name, please?" He didn't so much as look at Gael. When he didn't receive an answer, he glanced up and pointed with his quill: "Name?"

"G- Gael." The word came out croaked; it felt like he hadn't used his voice in days. He coughed up dust, cleared his throat and coughed again. The clerk mumbled and flicked through his paper. Gael saw multiple lists, with most of the entries crossed out. He made another attempt to speak: "You…Wh-ere am I?"

But the man with the list wasn't paying him any attention any more: He was on his way to another soldier, who had sat up straight on his stretcher and was staring around, wide-eyed. Now that Gael was looking around, he saw several empty stretchers. A suspicion began to assert itself in his mind, but as quickly as the thought had come, he supressed it. It couldn't be.

On the wall to the left was a small window, the source of the dim light in the room. Gael stood up carefully and made his way over there on trembling legs. A breeze of fresh air hit him as he looked outside. It wasn't much brighter than inside: He saw an overcast sky, with clouds as far as he could see. Rain was falling on the red shingle roofs of multiple towers, rising above a stone wall that blocked the rest of his vision. Figures were patrolling the wall in the rain; armoured figures with long, red capes.

He stepped back. Lothric. He was back in Lothric.

There was a commotion. When he turned, he saw the clerk on his knees, holding his chin. The man who had just woken up was hurrying to the door, stumbling over the bodies. Then a pair of guards, whom Gael hadn't noticed before, caught him under both arms. As he began to struggle, one of them hit him on the head with a shield. They carried him out, twisting in their grip.

Gael remained motionless. His numb was numb with the realization what was happening. The clerk came back, now with a bloody lip, and glared at him: "You. Leave quietly and report to your quartermaster. Now."

He obeyed. In the corridor outside, he pushed past several more soldiers, who were watching him alertly. Lothric soldiers, just like he was, but he felt as if they would attack him if he so much a moved the wrong way. He had to be imagining things. But he kept walking, without glancing sideways, until he reached a second, smaller room. Inside, a man was brooding over stacks of paper, with two guards standing behind him. They grasped the hilts of their swords when Gael entered.

The quartermaster looked up: "Ah, another one. Good." He took up a list similar to the clerk's: "What is your name, soldier?"

"Gael." he answered for the second time. He stared at the quartermaster: He didn't know him. He didn't recognize any of these people. A sudden desire to run came over him. Why was he so afraid? This was his army.

The man consulted another list: "You were at Red Streams, correct?"

I died there. "Yes, sir." he said.

The quartermaster clicked his tongue: "What a mess." He shook his head: "We won, if that interests you. Good to see you have survived. Well, in a manner of speaking."

"Yes, sir." Gael shivered suddenly. He took a calming breath: "Can I leave now, sir?"

His opposite leaned forward. There was a sense of amusement in his expression: "Whereto, if I may ask?"

Gael didn't like this at all. "Home." he said. He was ignoring the consequences; he just wanted to leave. His dread grew when he saw the man shake his head.

„You can't go I'm afraid. Why would you? You are a soldier. You have sworn service to the kingdom, have you not? "

"Yes, and I have died for it!" Gael almost shouted; he couldn't believe it: "Isn't that service enough?"

The quartermaster cackled: "You've died once and already claim retirement? Sorry my friend; it is not the world we live in. But 'live' is such a relative concept, isn't it? Now, be a good Undead and report in at the barracks with the rest of you lot, will you!"

This has become a very ambitious project for me. I wanted to write Gael's story, and then I kind of realized that that would be impossible without touching on some major developments and characters in the world of Lothric. So I'm going to see how far I can spin this with my current conception of the lore. I'll try to make it as reasonable as possible.

If anyone has concrete ideas about the painters' relation to Lothric (both Friede and Ariandel), I'd be really thankful for some input, since that is a part which I still struggle with.