A/N: I have no idea what did I just write. This thing just popped on my head and was annoyingly calling at me, saying, 'write me, write me' and I was trying to do something else. Until I just gave up and opened a new word document and this started to write itself.
I changed a few things here and there from both series, but nothing too obvious or lore breaking (hopefully).
It always fascinated the portrayals of the stories in both Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma universes, the strange barely comprehensible topics that both touch. In all honesty, this originally came to my mind as what would happen after the events of DS3 (particularly The Ringed City, but also vanilla – I mean, c'mon, the world is so fucked up even the freaking sun is darksigned.) But then the whole concept of the Cycle of Eternal Return popped up on my head, then a bit of twisting here and there and voilà, this abomination.
Oh, another thing, this focus more on Dragon's Dogma things at the start, but I think I made things obvious relating to Dark Souls afterwards. If you ask what happens after, don't, because it's exactly the same: the Lord Souls, the Age of Fire and the linking the flame.
That's all for the A/N. Without further ado…
Enjoy?
One could say, they had already passed beyond the realm of comprehension for normal standards. The lack of heart, courtesy of The Dragon, yet they still lived, driven mostly by the purpose of reclaiming it.
Ne'er to die by natural causes, immune of the pass of time, and closely related to a calm and dark place no one but they could enter, The Rift, without counting its inhabitants – the drivenless husks that had taken form not unlike normal humans.
Almost like if they were but golems, with no emotions and no real life, no spark that drives them to do things. Yet still, each of them possessed a modicum of individuality and consciousness as to inform them of different worlds, far but similar and in many cases, closer than they would have suspected. Barely held together by The Rift, and in very rare cases connected by it.
When they were still alive, they had conquered their fears when the time came and stood up to a foe with no hope of topping. For in their spirit laid one of the strongest wills, like a flame within the dark, shone brightly and caught the attention of The Dragon.
For their bravery – or in someone else's opinion, foolery – they were rewarded with a claw through the breast. The lack of heart was but a little inconvenience in staying within the mortal realm, though they were no mortal anymore.
For their actions, they were known both by the populace and The Dragon itself as The Arisen, the one with a will strong enough to challenge fate.
But in regaining their heart, The Arisen discovered that their journey was not anywhere close to its end.
The First Sign they saw was the gape at the capital, the Everfall. As the inhabitants of the Rift put it with confused expressions, it was the source from where all of the branching worlds spring from.
Yet The Arisen had to visit a few of the gates within the Everfall to conclude that all worlds connected to it were withered – likely that those gates only connect to worlds without any Arisen or indeed, any life at all. Most of them shared many similarities, with the exception of the Primordial World.
'Tis was just speculation, but the sad remnants of a world that only held a small patch of dirt and it was so corrupted the fire had turned violet, and not to mention its sole inhabitant, a Dragon not unlike the Arisen's own, but much, much older, did paint it as at least the Eldest World connected to the Source.
It was not until they came upon Bitterblack Isle, a place that was not physically existent, that some pieces started to fall into place.
Only Arisen and the Riftmen could even enter the place, so just like the Everfall and the Rift, The Isle was in-between existences.
After discovering the truth behind the place, and it's curse, more and more pieces started to fall into place, to complete a picture The Arisen wasn't sure they liked.
To liberate Ashe and Olra from their timeless suffering may had been heart-warming at the time, but the fact was that the place had changed them, in a way.
It may have been the deaths, the jumpiness that was needed to maintain oneself alive, the horrors that were the monsters, or the demented souls of those who lost their will on the labyrinth – or something else altogether.
The Arisen could feel within their breast not only their Dragonforged heart, but something else.
Two somethings – that eerily resembled the feelings that they had within the cursed land. A dark tainted soul, filled to the brim with hatred and despair – that appeared shortly after they vanquished Daimon, the grotesque result of the fusion of Arisen and Dragon fuelled by despair. And an indifferent soul, but that it overflowed with the stench of Death. Both presences were unconscious – but very much alive, leeching on the Arisen.
They all resonated with the Wakestones – including the Arisen's own Heart – in a disturbing but familiar way.
In addition, the trip to Bitterblack Isle gave the Arisen an insight on a concept that had been introduced early on their journey, for indeed those had been the Dragon's very first words when their heart had been taken. The Cycle.
After the resolution of The Isle, The Arisen went back to look for answers within the Everfall.
The vanquishing of the First Dragon gave them some amount of information that answered little and opened more questions.
The amount of Hearts the thing had attested both how many Arisen once that world had, and how many of them lost. The state of the world itself attested the strength of the wills of its past inhabitants – there hadn't been anyone with the will to surpass adversity.
And so the Dragon of the Primordial World was added to the presences within The Arisen's breast.
By sacrificing enough Wakestones in the Flameservant's Throne, a Gate to the answers was made. Or at least, it was supposed to be.
The world in its almost ruinous state after the death of The Dragon was like that because it's keeper, the steward to its welfare, The Seneschal, had been losing the Will that once had driven them – after an amount of lifetimes untold, they had wanted to embrace the end to infinity.
So the previous Arisen was finally laid to rest, and the presence of the Seneschal was added to The Arisen's heart.
But they didn't merely continue the aimless route the previous Seneschal had taken, likely after the one after them, and that one too after the one before.
The Arisen had witnessed the fates of other worlds – and even if they knew what had once happened when the chain was forcefully broken, The Arisen hadn't thought something similar would happen, for the circumstances between them and Ashe were quite significantly different.
So, in an attempt to break the Eternal Cycle from within, they unknowingly tied the fates of the worlds beyond together. Using the Cold of their Dead Body, the Heat of their undying Will, the Life of the amalgamated thousand souls that they had obtained from the Primordial Dragon, the Death that they had obtained from Arthacos, the Light that they had obtained from the Seneschal, and the Dark that they had obtained from Daimon – The Arisen tried to turn the wheels of Fate off balance completely – and thus resonated within worlds beyond the Rift, and The Rift itself.
Every World converged in a single place, every life amalgamated, just as every death – to the point of being unable to differentiate one from the other. The same had happened with Heat and Cold, and Light and Dark.
Everything became the same, and the only things to survive The Collapse were the Dragons from all the Worlds converged, and the soulless husks that once inhabited the place known once as The Rift.
Aimless and without will, the husks wandered the Gray that was the new existence, the now only existence – while the Dragons, now without they purpose and spark, did very much the same.
But nothing was completely fused – it was merely a form.
For even if the Above was nothing but Gray; there was the amalgamation of everything that once was, in the Below, guarded by the Will of The Last Arisen.
It was only a matter of time before the husks found it and everything started anew, because one thing that the Last Arisen didn't know was that the Eternal Ring was both larger than they had thought, and that it was impervious to anything.
True, the amount of time that was needed to pass until that happened was so long that it loses any meaning to a mortal conscious, but if one thing is sure, to any existing thing there is no End, just as there is no Beginning.
For everything is part of the Eternal Ring.