Ilanya of the Boreal Valley exits the massive cathedral, leaving the lifeless body of the tyrant, Sulyvahn, behind.
The battle she'd fought against him was a tough one, and he brought her near death several times, but the saving grace of her empowered Estus Flask kept her from crossing that threshold. He had taunted her all the while, proclaiming his superiority and denouncing her as weak and ill-suited to defeat him, which was obvious bait that, to her shame, she took a few times, throwing off her concentration and allowing him some cheap shots.
When she thought she had seen everything the would-be pontiff could muster, he surprised her by tapping into some of his more powerful magic, sprouting wings made of dark energy and cloning himself using that same energy in an effort to overwhelm her. It was long and grueling, but Ilanya had prevailed in the end, slaying Sulyvahn with no remorse and leaving his body for the dogs to find at some point.
But not before she took his soul.
She looks down at the wretched thing as she stands in the courtyard directly behind the cathedral, watching it writhe, almost as if in contempt of being held by her. She finds some small amount of amusement in this, but ultimately does not care much beyond that; not even his essence is worthy of her respect, and, despite the fact that old Ludleth may be able to craft an impressive weapon from it, Ilanya decides to consume it instead to receive a nominal boost to her soul count.
With that matter settled, she decides to make her way out of the courtyard and walks up the stairs, heading to a much more open area to the side of the cathedral, hoping to make her way to Aldrich before too much longer.
To this end, she traipses through this part of Irithyll with a purpose, fighting off hostile giant slaves, several Deacons, mercenaries, two more of those wretched abominations created by Sulyvahn, and even invading phantoms of despicable people who believe that Aldrich is worthy of protecting.
She takes especially great pleasure in slaying that last group.
From there, she finds herself faced with a trek upwards, along the rafters of the giant building that towers above even the cathedral that once housed Sulyvahn. She continues onward, but finds her progress impeded by those same strange knights in silver armor that she'd encountered further back in Irithyll, and they mostly seem to be the bow-wielding ones, which Ilanya does not like very much; she'd prefer it if they all used swords and didn't insist on pelting her with what seem to go far beyond arrows and appear to be more akin to giant spears made entirely of stone or metal.
Still, she senses that she's getting even closer to Aldrich, and so she powers through the barrage of unfair arrows, slaying every knight she comes across, as well as collecting more ash for the Shrine Handmaid to use in improving her wares.
When the last knight is slain, Ilanya steps into the opening in the side of the building, where she comes across what looks to be the entrance to a tomb. It has statues featuring deities long-gone, whom she does not necessarily recognize but can infer held great power and importance in an age far in the past. To her right, she can feel as though the statue directly in the center isn't quite real, and her suspicions are confirmed when she brushes it with her fingers and causes it to disappear, revealing a path slightly downwards. She follows it and enters the doorway she finds at the bottom, walking down the hall until she finds a body wearing a spectacular suit of bronze armor. Best she can tell, it hasn't been here too long; the woman wearing the armor likely died within the last week or so, possibly only the last couple of days. Ilanya takes the armor and stores it in her soul, says a small prayer for the poor woman, and carries onward into the giant room at the back, quite obviously the tomb.
Despite the size of the room, it is quite plain, something Ilanya finds odd. Surely, if the figure buried here were as important as she feels, the decorum would be much more extravagant. The state of tomb itself says that it has seen some sort of recent disturbance, as evidenced by the bits of rubble scattered across the floor.
She can sense the faint traces of energy left behind by Sulyvahn, causing her to shudder.
Along with that energy, though, there's another kind of energy here, one she surprisingly recognizes and remembers. It has been quite some time since she's felt it, but she involuntarily relaxes as she basks in it, walking up the steps to the coffin and sitting down cross-legged.
Closing her eyes, she feels herself fall into a trance...
"It's this dream again," is the first thought in young Ilanya's mind.
For the last couple of days, the young girl has dreamed of a misty room (or was it foggy?), a dream that typically lasts just mere moments before releasing her to the waking world.
However, tonight is different.
From whatever is covering the room, a figure emerges, frightening Ilanya almost to the point of tears. It stands tall, perhaps at around six foot or taller, wearing an imposing crown that boosts its height by even more. It wears white robes of some kind, and its skin is quite pale. Perhaps most terrifying, though, is the multitude of snakes that seem to cover its entire lower half. Whether or not it has legs, Ilanya can't say, but it doesn't matter, because she's scared all the same.
It looks at her for what she believes to be years, but is actually just a few seconds, then says, "Be not afraid. Thou art safe."
Ilanya can't believe her ears. Did this thing just say she was safe? Does it expect her to believe it? This is a terrifying monster, and it's telling her that she's safe. Ilanya isn't so sure.
As if sensing her thoughts, the figure somehow kneels (does it have legs beneath that robe and those snakes?) and holds out its hand, inviting her to come closer. Ilanya hesitates, but decides to trust it, approaching it and taking its hand.
The figure smiles and gently closes its hand around hers. Naturally, this startles her a bit, but she doesn't sense any malice or ill intent from this figure. In fact, it seems quite friendly towards her.
Mustering all of her courage, Ilanya asks, "Who...are you?"
"I am called Dark Sun Gwyndolin, but thou mayst simply regard me as Gwyndolin," it says.
"Gwyndolin..." Ilanya mulls it over, the name feeling nice on her tongue. "Are you a friend of my mommy and daddy?"
"No, I know not thy parents. However, I know of thee all the same, as I know all within mine care. As a child of Irithyll, thou art a child of the gods."
Ilanya is confused; she's never heard much about...gods. "Huh? The gods?"
"Indeed. I shall not overwhelm thy mind at this point in time, however; there will be much opportunity to explain it to thee in the future."
Ilanya gives Gwyndolin a slow nod. She doesn't know what he (she thinks Gwyndolin is a he, anyways; she doesn't know for sure) means by this, but he seems friendly enough, so she just takes it all in stride.
"Where are you from?" she asks Gwyndolin, trying to learn more about her new friend.
"I hail from the glorious city of Anor Londo, home of the gods," he says, voice containing some slight air of pride.
"Where's that?"
Gwyndolin chuckles, delighted at the child's precious curiosity, saying, "Thou mayst discovereth someday. Mayhaps thy path in life shalt lead thee to meet me there, where we might converse in person."
"That sounds like fun!" Ilanya exclaims, giggling.
Gwyndolin chuckles again. "Indeed."
The two continue to speak in Ilanya's dream for quite some time before Gwyndolin decides to release her to the waking world, but not before he promises to visit her again in future dreams (which Ilanya upgrades to a pinky promise, amusing and delighting the god).
Before she awakes, Ilanya hears Gwyndolin say, "Blessing of the moon upon thy journey."
Waking from the trance, Ilanya remembers where she is, the biting cold of the wind and snow permeating even the depths of the tomb. She recollects herself for a few moments before rising and making her way out of the tomb, heading out the opening opposite from it. There, she discovers a massive spiral staircase that doubles in function as an elevator, pulling the lever to bring it down to her level so that she can use it to ascend to the top of this massive building.
When she reaches the top, she can hardly believe her eyes.
She's in Anor Londo.
This is the great cathedral of the gods. She remembers from the dreams she had as a child, where a figure purporting to be a god visited her and described this place to her on several occasions. She doubts the veracity of these dreams now that she's an adult, but her journey thus far has proven to her that what may seem impossible might well be quite the opposite, and this seems to be the pinnacle of that realization.
The whole time, her home of Irithyll has housed the city of the gods, and she had no idea.
But she cannot get caught up in reverence, and so she makes her way to the lonely bonfire just in front of the rotating staircase. She takes care to rest up for a bit, knowing that Aldrich likely awaits her in the cathedral. As she rests, she decides that she will focus more on just offensive miracles to slay the cannibal, believing he deserves the full force of her arsenal.
After finishing with that, she ends her respite and stands again, making her way up the colossal staircase that waits beyond the bonfire. As she makes her way up, she slays more of those peculiar knights clad in silver and then proceeds through the small doorway on the right, where she happens upon a larger doorway.
The remains of a giant blacksmith greet her as she walks in, his smoldering coal lying near his head. Much like with the female knight down below, Ilanya stores what she finds with him within her soul and says a prayer for him, hoping his soul was able to find peace when he passed on. Knowing she cannot linger, however, she proceeds to the staircase that spirals upwards and exits into the cathedral proper, where even more Deacons and some lone bits of Aldrich's grotesque form wait for her. She slays them and the Deep Accursed that attempts to ambush her as she opens the massive doors just in case she needs a shortcut.
With the interior of the cathedral cleared out, only the fog wall at the back remains.
Alrdich is in there. She can feel it.
Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she passes through the barrier created by the power of the great soul that lies beyond.
When she opens her eyes, though, she wishes she hadn't.
Sure enough, the enormous monstrosity comprised of disgusting sludge is within, his mass so great that it covers the entire floor while part of him rises from it. That's not the disturbing part, though.
Attached to the part of Aldrich rising from the floor is none other than the god from her childhood dreams.
Aldrich is in the middle of consuming Gwyndolin, who is still alive somehow, if only barely.
The sight of this horrifies Ilanya, but greater than the terror, the disgust, is the rage that quickly overcomes her, sending her rushing forward into battle with a furious yell.
Aldrich finally notices her and, using Gwyndolin as a puppet, begins to attack her, flinging a barrage of magic at her. Luckily, the anger coursing through Ilanya's veins brings along with it heightened awareness and plentiful adrenaline, allowing her to dodge the attacks in time. She counters with a few swings of her enormous mace, plucked from the corpse from one of Aldrich's very own cathedral knights. They hit their mark and wound him quite a bit, but, as a Lord of Cinder, it will definitely take more than that to kill him.
The battle carries on and on, with the same pattern repeating in an almost endless loop, save for when Aldrich occasionally decides to shoot a hail of arrows at Ilanya. These are much more difficult for her to dodge, even with her heightened senses, and so she takes heavier damage than she does with the magic, forcing her to retreat and sip some of her Estus.
When Aldrich has had enough punishment, he resurfaces from the ground in an Embered state, signaling to Ilanya that the battle is about to get even tougher. Despite (or, perhaps, in spite of) this, she has no fear of this beast; she is here to destroy him and return his Cinders to Firelink Shrine. It was already personal for her since he was made to do what she herself was going to, but the fact that he's consuming the individual who brought her much happiness and gave her someone to talk to as a child makes it even worse, and so she's resolved to make his death even more painful than she was already planning for it to be.
In his Embered state, Aldrich, much like the Abyss Watchers were, is quite a bit more formidable, able to surround himself with fire wherever he emerges from in the floor, as well as applying fire to the staff he uses to cast his magic attacks. Ilanya notices that he also seems to be using some kind of new attack, perhaps a miracle, though it's one she's never seen.
In the end, though, nothing Aldrich can do saves him from the relentless onslaught of brutal attacks that Ilanya inflicts upon him, and he finally dies, releasing his unfinished meal from his grasp.
Ilanya looks down at the bit of him still sticking out from the floor, her body heaving as she still tries to catch her breath. The battle was long and hard, putting her to the absolute test. Even though she's clearly victorious, she can't bring herself to let go of the anger she still feels towards this despicable...thing.
With a scream of rage that makes the one she released at the beginning of the battle seem puny, Ilanya calls upon every last bit of strength she has and batters Aldrich's dead form with her mace relentlessly. Even though he's dead, it doesn't quell her lust for vengeance, her need to punish him for the atrocities he's committed. Every so often, she strikes him with the Lightning Stake miracle she recovered from the Carthus Sand Worm down in Smouldering Lake just before confronting High Lord Wolnir.
When, at last, she's finished punishing Aldrich's corpse, Ilanya is shaking, her body heaving even more and her eyes letting out tears of sorrow and rage. She lowers her mace and puts her talisman on her belt, then slowly turns to face the dying Gwyndolin.
He had already started to become sick by the time Sulyvahn came and infiltrated the Blades of the Darkmoon, but Gwyndolin is sure now that there's no way he'll be able to make it much longer after being wounded and partially devoured by Aldrich. Either way, he had resigned himself to his fate, and there was no way he could have possibly known that the sweet, young child he had known all that time ago would come to face down the Lord of Cinder.
As far as he had heard, Ilanya had been ambushed and killed by her compatriots on her way to Link the Fire, and he'd mourned her death for quite some time after. Unlike the other humans he'd interacted with over the years, he had genuinely come to care about her. He looked forward to speaking her in her dreams, and eventually, perhaps, in person, but the news of her death dashed all hopes of the latter from his mind.
As a result, Gwyndolin erected a small memorial to her in the graveyard in Irithyll, though he had a feeling that Sulyvahn had ordered it destroyed when he took over as "pontiff" by his own decree.
Only now, all these years later, and under the most grim and unfortunate of circumstances, does he finally see his hopes realized, and it causes him much emotional agony. Only fitting, he supposes, that his heart hurt along with the rest his physical form, and he can infer, even through the agony of dying, that her heart echoes the pain of his own. Never before, not even in the eyes of his fellow gods, has he seen this amount of regret, pity, or sorrow directed towards him. He can tell she remembers, if the fantastic display of outrage she exhibited during the battle wasn't enough to do that already.
Gwyndolin makes a feeble, vain effort to reach out to her, but his strength is all but gone by now, and the most he can do is make his fingers twitch.
He hopes, perhaps, she'll know what he's trying to do.
Kneeling beside Gwyndolin, Ilanya finally lets her sorrow out and cries as she watches him make his pathetic movements and hears him gasp and groan in pain. She looks at the way his fingers are twitching and how he keeps trying to raise his hand, and she immediately does the first thing that comes to mind.
She removes her gauntlets and holds his hand.
She sees Gwyndolin attempt a smile and breaks down even further, her body shuddering as she tries to stop herself from full-on sobbing. There's just so much she wants to say to him, but she can't quite manage to properly process any of it, instead just continuing to cry.
Gwyndolin opens his mouth, clearly trying to say something, though naught but another pained sound escapes, and Ilanya reaches out and places a gentle hand on his back, her mace long since set aside. Though it causes Gwyndolin a little more pain, feeling her touch upon his skin again brings him a great deal of comfort. Even all these years later, through all of the awful things that have happened to both of them, and against all odds, their tight bond of friendship has survived.
It's such a shame that it also appears to be reaching its end.
Even so, Ilanya remains by Gwyndolin's side and doesn't let go of his hand for anything, wanting him to know that she's still right there next to him.
At last, Ilanya finally manages to say, "I made it, at last... We always talked about this, remember...? I promised you I would come visit you in Anor Londo one day, and you told me you looked forward to it..." She shudders as she again suppresses a sob. "Oh, Gwyndolin... I'm so sorry... I failed you..."
Injured though he may be, Gwyndolin still manages to change his body language enough to display to her that he doesn't think she was to blame for anything that happened to him. If anyone is to blame for the other's fate, it's him. She's a child of the gods, and that means he was supposed to protect her, keep her from harm, but he was unable to keep her fellows from killing her, something he still curses himself for, especially now in his final moments.
"If I had known you were here, that you had been in trouble, I would've..." Ilanya sniffles. "I should've been here to help you..."
His grip on her hand tightens, though not as much as he wishes it could. He feels himself getting weaker by the second, but he wants to hold on for as he can.
"Gwyndolin...thank you... You gave a lonely little girl a friend to talk to, even if it was just in her dreams... It meant so much to me..."
Gwyndolin manages to smile at last, weak though it may be. It makes Ilanya smile herself.
"I wish things could have ended differently, Gwyndolin... I would have gladly served as a Blade of the Darkmoon..."
Even in his weakened state, these words fill Gwyndolin with immense pride and happiness, and his own tears begin to fall in full force.
Unfortunately, their time together begins to end as Gwyndolin's body begins to give up in full, his weak grip growing even weaker. This reignites Ilanya's distress, and her sobbing amplifies again. They both know he has just mere moments left before the end. Gwyndolin wants to do something special for her in his final moments, and he feels like he has the perfect idea.
As a side effect of consuming Gwyndolin, Aldrich had begun to consume his soul, as well, making the process even more agonizing for Gwyndolin.
However, Aldrich only got to consume a fraction of Gwyndolin's soul before being slain, meaning the god still has quite a fair bit of it left.
He wants to give it to Ilanya.
To this end, he actually manages to direct his attention towards her mace. She follows his gaze, then gasps and shakes her head furiously.
"N-No...! I can't...!" she exclaims, growing more frantic.
He just squeezes her hand again as best as he can, assuring her that he wants this and that it's okay. It prompts her to hesitantly relent in her denial, and she slowly rises to her feet and picks up the mace, looking down at him as she raises it above her head.
Shaking and sobbing, she manages to choke out, in a hushed whisper, "B-Blessing of the moon upon thy j-journey..."
Gwyndolin closes his eyes as he hears the mace begin to fall, and then he knows no more.
The only sound to follow is the most horrid wail of anguish that nobody ever hears.