To Link the Fire
The thought that it was all over felt anything but new.
It was a shadow at the back of his head, a faithful follower, no matter how fast he forced himself to run. Solaire perceived it vaguely, yet always there – brushing his ankles along the sting of the lava, wherever its molten gold chewed at the edge of the sorcery.
It reminded him of the ring. How its circle tugged at his finger, equally solid, equally persistent. And if thoughts could melt into magic and magic into thoughts, in a land cursed with so many blessings, then his end was bound to come along.
Sooner or later, Solaire told himself. The idea, so sudden and so old, spilled all over his wake. When in the weave of time, he couldn't know – but for sure.
No ring he'd ever find could protect him from fate,right?
Maybe the truth was that simple, his mind groaned, as the soles of his boots scorched the wood. The curse was a labyrinth with no way out. He had lost sight of its allure long ago – in a glittering palace, maybe, or in the revolting loam of the swamps.
There was nothing but himself to keep his resolve alive. When it dawned on him, Solaire had to sit in a corner, away from the carcasses and their distracting smell of blood. He focused on his loneliness, grasping at his own mind, until he no longer remembered what he was sitting for.
The silence cracked what was left of him.
As his breath evened out, so did the air all around. His mouth opened in half-agony. Come to think of it, the truth was even simpler.
The light in his eyes flickered.
There was nothing at all, anywhere. Lordran was a barren desert. The fool he was had chased after its shine, and there he was going to fall – alone in the dark, like he had been all along, with only just the memory of a crackling fire.
It was the end. The once faint thought weighed on his chest like a gravestone. Because his goal was slipping from his grasp, step after step, and he – what else?
Who could reverse the current of a river?
He never ordered his eyelids to close. They obeyed on their own. The first waves of night washed over him.
The next time he awoke, Solaire lay on the stone floor, just at the edge of a staircase. There was but one reality occupying his body – it was getting darker, maybe colder. He did not like it.
He was gone again. At his return, he had climbed his way to his knees. The mouth of a hallway opened up at his feet, inviting him to crawl to its bowels.
It was dark. He did not like it. He had to move back to the bridge, almost halfway through the path, to fully make sense of the ache in his head.
It was dark, but his surroundings had become too bright. He shielded his body, shaking and torn from the inside, behind that of a slain demon – a demon? a dead demon?
It didn't take him long to understand. The light was there, radiating from a sea of embers, and he could no longer bear it. The last thing he heard was his own fading breath.
He came back to complete, icy blackness.
Solaire did not remember what fear felt like. To be fair, there was not much he could find in his memory anymore. He still didn't need it to be sure – it was indeed sheer terror to jolt him to his feet, to unsheathe his sword, giving his muscles a will of their own.
He raised his head. It was the last time his gaze truly met something.
Fear had shaken his body out of immobility. What hurled it to the red glow, and spread out his lips to free an inhuman scream, was uncontrollable longing.
In that hallway, Solaire was reborn.
Strands of blazing yellow, escaping his new crown. Clean, white teeth, bared to intimidate the emptiness all around. He was done, done with the grief and the uncertainty and being lost – he stood in his own darkness now, calmly silent.
His eyelids were still shut. He wouldn't spoil it in haste. Time, time, time – with all the time on his hands, now, finally –
He swallowed. His head felt lighter, emptier. He had quit caring about anything else.
If the world still twisted on itself, dark and cool, he knew it wouldn't last long. He was in the middle of his ascension – a moment of night, just before sunrise. In one more movement, he would come alive again.
The cold in his guts faded. He was ready.
When Solaire opened his eyes, the world burst into flames.
The world was also in cinders.
Through his gaze reborn, showering warmth and life on the children of men, the vision spread with devastating clarity.
Whatever his touch grazed crumbled to ashes, made light and brittle by his unrestrained heat. He raged on, out of control – come to be from a crack in the fabric, to shape all of creation anew.
He curled up in a hemisphere, the cradle of disparity. Fluent as water, he spread his element in waves. The overflowing cup traced borders never seen before, all the while bending on itself.
It was like that. The Sun remembered. At its fickle core, the universe bit its tail – it would happen once more, once upon a time, time and time again.
He was a hand. He was a thousand hands more. He was a hand and a hilt, incandescent, he was the bones and the ash and the spark. He was the smell of burnt flesh, flesh chosen to fuel a beginning –
– and he opened his eyes, over and over, to see it all unfold. From start to finish, no end, no beginning. There was just his body, eaten by change. And he followed in its wake.
He consumed himself in an embrace. It felt like love, maybe like the future. After all, the walk of time had many shapes, but just one fate.
It would be true, as long as he burnt. All things rose from the flame, and in the flame turned to cinders.
He knew, at last, what he had been born to do.
He was the Sun.
Though the scorching pain belonged to him, the sobs he heard just behind it didn't.
For whatever reason, that sound alone was enough to press him against the earth, more than the blade piercing through his chest. He could not help keeling over.
It was then, and then only, that Solaire found out he had been dreaming all along.
Of what, he never had the privilege to know.
I've been meaning to write something about Dark Souls for a while. The subtle message of this game stuck with me like few others; I did my best to convey it, somehow, through the miserable storyline of my favorite character.