Courtesy
He returns in failure to the city of his gods.
The Knightess survived against all odds to follow him. He has seen the strong die before, but still some part of him does not understand how this woman could live while something like Smough could die. He is livid at Smough for dying, how dare that oaf chose such an important moment to fail so completely, so utterly? And what he did to Artorias' monument…for that, the wolf beast took Smough's head like it was nothing, and Ornstein's arm much the same. The memory recites in a constant loop before his eyes. He wobbles as he takes the steps down the great city's wall—there is an uncomfortable lightness to his remaining limbs, a sensation of falling. Even sun blessed Anor Londo seems darker than it was before.
It dawns on him that he is dying. He must return to the Princess, sooner than he thought. He must be rejuvenated.
The Darkmoon Knightess's is gasping softly as she makes her way down the stairs behind him. The noise started as they passed through the Parish and has not let up since, not even when they walked the emptied, corpse strewn halls of Sen's Fortress where silence would have been most fitting. She makes the noise every few steps like it is a tic, a sudden hiccup of breath with a wooden edge, sometimes wet sounding. Humans are noisy creatures.
The knightess lags up beside him, sucking mucus through her nose, or whatever she has left of a nose after the Firekeeper curse. Now she looks up at him through that foppish helmet. What goggling stare or sullen frown is hidden beneath it he knows not. How, before her telling failure, had he ever respected this thing that stands before—below—him—he knows not.
The Knightess attempts speech. "I…my Lord Ornstein, we are approaching my bonfire. I must tend to it. Before I report to my Covenant, and to Lord Gwyndolin."
"I thought you had brought all your Covenant to the battle, my lady."
"Near all. I left a handful of the less experienced and less able behind to guard our shrine."
"Did you."
She moves away from him as they walk. They come to the elevator, the palace of the Lords towering beyond the bridge below, past the grand cathedral. The knightess leaves him and staggers down the opposite stairs to her bonfire, a thing seemingly more important to her than her own Covenant. It is possible that the Lords will decree a punishment on her Covenant for failing so completely and utterly in the battle last night. He looks forward to that as he enters the palace, accepting its embrace of familiar halls and watchful, silent sentinel giants. The air is no cooler within than in the sun-drenched city outside, as if Anor Londo was all of a piece. It has always been so. He is sure it has always been so.
Now he stands empty handed and mutilated at the towering bronze door to the Princess's chamber and knocks. The giant sentinels stand aside to let him pass through, and the door itself moves of its own accord to allow him entry, as it should be. This is the Princess's hall. This is his post.
He stumbles inside as if a great burden has been lifted from his shoulders. He hears his own voice, shamefully unsteady and faint.
"My Lady."
There was a smile on her face before she saw him. "Knight Captain Ornstein, your arm—what has happened to you?"
"Smough is dead."
Strange. That is not the thing he planned to say. And he had not planned to come so close to her—there are protocols, distances…he staggers back to the proper station, clutching at his wound as if it were responsible for the impropriety.
Princess Gwynevere is frowning—he cannot bear the sight. "Dead? And how did this happen?"
"I..." Pain twinges through his missing arm. "He..."
"I will heal you." Her face creases for a moment. "Come closer, have it out. I must know what has happened."
"Thank you, my Lady." He shuffles forward towards her warmth, feeling awkward and unbalanced without his arm and his spear. A new weapon is needed—at least until he reclaims his spear. He kneels, knees clunking to the polished floor, and bows his head, glancing up to see her hand float above him, graceful and light—so light that it disturbs not a molecule of air. Golden luminescence wafts down from her palm and blankets over him. It feels as though he has stepped into a hot bath. The wound begins to knit itself. "Thank you, my Lady. Thank you."
"It is the least I can do for my most loyal knight." Her smile is strained—of course it is, she is anxious to hear his news. "Now, Ornstein, where is the ring?"
He means to tell her, he does. But his mouth acts on its own, spewing babble and nonsense. "The Forest Hunters cut down my troops, and the forest burned. Solaire of Astora confessed to killing the Chosen Undead, to breaking your prophecy. He confessed to me and the Darkling. You should have let me put him down ten years ago, my Lady."
"The Abysswalker's Ring. Where is it?" There is no trace of a smile on her face any longer.
"Solaire of Astora...the Lady of the Darkling swore to me she would retrieve it from him, but when we retreated she had not taken it, and by then it was too late to return." And on he goes beneath her questioning eyes, struggling to find an explanation that does not include what he found at the grave of Artorias, what he saw, what he did. He fails. With every wretched word, the sun from the stained glass above grows dimmer. The Princess's form disappears beneath a veil of shadow, with only her glittering eyes shinning down in the dark. The scents of perfume and soothing oil seem to rot from his nostrils, the generous heat of her body whickering away as quickly into the floor.
"And our army, Ornstein. The one I commissioned you to lead?"
He is on his hands and knees. The nose of his helmet kisses the ground. "Burnt and scattered. Only the Lady of the Darkmoon and I survived."
She draws air in with a hiss. "Your apologies are worth nothing. The ring was our last hope, and what pain staking care it took to arrange the attempt, to draw that force from the very dregs of this accursed land. I trusted you to lead them, Knight Captain. And you lost it all and turned tail to come bleeding back to me. Now what have we to turn to?"
No, no, this is wrong, this is not how it is meant to be. There must be a misunderstanding. He dares to speak over her. "I am your servant. I will return to the forest. I will—"
"You will fail again, no doubt. Father should have retired you the moment Artorias was lost."
The words stab into his head like a sword and leave him speechless. Her eyes are gimlets in the dark. "It was my weakness and sentimentality that led me to rely on you, and now your failure is mine own. You have shamed me with your cowardice."
"No." He wrenches himself from the floor. "You cannot—"
Her shadowed form jerks away from him. "Get out."
She does not mean this. He was there when she threw tantrums as a child, when she was wed to the flame God Flan, when she returned centuries later when Gwyn had gone and made him swear to never speak of that marriage again. He knows her. And she knows his place is here.
"I am…" he holds out his hands, grasping "I am your champion, my Lady. Your father swore me so. Who will guard you if—"
"Someone who has not failed me yet. No more of you." Her fingers snap, thunder. The floor shakes with the march of the sentinels behind him.
"You cannot. You cannot…" Forgetting all but his desperation he puts his boot forwards, stepping brazenly into the shadows that hide her, finding nothing with his begging hands. Silence. Deafening, dead silence. In the dark, it is as if she has disappeared. One sentinel hoists him by the arm. The other lifts him by the flared collar of his armor. The royal making bends beneath their fingers and remains twisted all the way to the bottom of the stairs, where he crashes in a heap.
He stands in the great hall and rails for hours. Screams without words, words without meaning. Never, not even in the nightmares has he feared this. She has been angered before, yes, she has been furious. But not with him, not like this.
But it is not just. The fault was not his, but theirs, the Undead, the humans—that haughty Darkmoon quean and her slobbering puppet dog of the sun. His screams echo in the halls and the hollow silver knights, the ghosts of his old knights, they shudder and shy away. Perhaps some part of their armor remembers they once served him. Finally, the royal sentinels have had enough. The tromp down with gargantuan steps and hoist him once more.
This time he struggles in earnest; the stairs down from the palace to the bridge are much further than those from the Princess's hall. He attempts spears of lightning, but with his single arm restrained he cannot wield it meaningfully, and all his angry bursts of light are like sparks to them. Through the gates, the sun pours over him, blinding him but not his wardens. The giants lift him fully off the ground when they reach the head of the great steps. Then they throw him down. The bruises hidden beneath his armor erupt, and his arm is ripped off again and again each time his torn shoulder hits the steps. Blackness comes as a relief.
The garden is singing and the world is at peace.
The two of them are walking without arms or armor. The gardener golems snick and chuff their troughs in dry, unsweating silence, and the insects and the birds clamor out their lives through the shimmering heat. They have nowhere to be, no tasks set before them. They have unbraided their hair.
She begins it again, as if this contentment were intolerable. "If there was ever a time that I should be allowed some leniency it would be now."
"He is still your brother in arms, and I am still your captain. The answer is still no."
He sees her tiny shoulders stiffen. "You cannot hold me back forever."
"It should be propriety that holds you back."
"I have strong feelings for him. Have you never had such feelings?"
He avoids her eyes. "None stronger than my duty."
"I feel pity for you, then."
There is a woman sobbing somewhere in the garden, a face without eyes or mouth at the corner of perception. White tears creep down her cheeks.
"Save your pity for blind Gough." He stops beside a boulder that sits on the lip of the burbling falls, its bottom black with water. "Or the wolf, so you can kiss his little bruises better."
"Perhaps I will." At her signal he offers a hand to boost her to the rock. When she sits at its top cross legged, her eyes are level with his. She is not wearing her mask, of course, but her eyes were always the color of quicksilver. "Kiss him, that is."
He stands back from the boulder. "I was referring to Sif, not his owner."
"I know. But you should not treat either of them that way."
"Do not be so tame. Artorais gave me some bruises of my own." Ornstein feels himself smiling, despite the man's infuriating nature.
"Only after what you did to his wolf."
He has had enough. "Do not try to maneuver me with guilt, Ciaran. You may form what friendship you wish with Artorias, though I do not approve. But involvement with him I forbid."
"Do you truly imagine you can stop me, Captain?" she asks. Her mouth turns up at one corner, like a thin curving stinger.
"I should not need to. You are a knight first and a woman second. The moment you forget this, you endanger yourself and—"
She interrupts him. "What madness do you imagine I will follow Artorias into? If he were to die today, do you fear that I would simply lay down and die with him? I am no lunatic."
"They say that love is a kind of madness." He read it in a book.
She shakes her head at him, amused, and asks playfully: "Then where were you when the humans killed us, hm?"
And the garden dies.
"I was a knight," he spits back into her face. "What would you have had me do? Leave Anor Londo undefended to go chasing after you and that fool? Gough only followed to bring you back—he always took his side, just like you. And you know Artorias went there for another woman, don't you? For a human princess. You followed him unasked for, like his own panting wolf. And YOU dare to ask ME-"
The beautiful eyes of the Lord's Blade Ciaran shriveled back into holes of paper-thin flesh and petrified bone. Her skin puckered and opened with a hundred mouths into until there was no skin left, and her fine clothing burst with termites and dissolved into her ribs. So many years had passed that he could not make out the scraps of armor and cloth from what had been her organs.
When Ornstein awakens on the stone at the bottom of the steps, then his course of action is laid out before him. He will return to the Darkroot Garden and mount Alvina's smug laughing head upon a pole. And this time he will retrieve the Abysswalker's ring himself, and he will wear it all the way back to Anor Londo and throw it at Gwynevere's feet and ask her what is lost now and what is found.
This will redeem his failure.
No doubt the Forest Hunters are reeling from the initial attack. But in this state, his wounds opened again, Smough dead, he needs support: another army at his back when he puts that cat's head on his spear—a new spear, another thing he needs.
Gwynevere will not help him. Not yet. But perhaps her brother will.
The rotating contraption in the center of the bridge leads him down to the Dark Moon temple. There he enters upon the Darkmoon knightess and her remaining few compatriots. They commiserate on scattered cushions in hushed tones, most near to the small bonfire in the center of the room, a few standing by the statue of their saint set into the furthest wall. They wear armor scavenged from the silver knights—a uniform adopted in an attempt to lend themselves authority in the decade since the breaking of the Princess's prophecy. The garb is an insult to the memory of his knights, for they would never have suffered the walking dead to bear their arms and armor. They will pay for it one day.
But the Princess forbade him from disciplining her brother's flock. Doing so now would only add to the difficult task Ornstein now faces.
Those sitting rise as he enters, save for the Firekeeping knightess who is hunched closest to their fire. This woman is not her bonfire's duty and nothing else, no, but all flames hold a special significance for such specimens.
"Ornstein?" The knightess seems lost in thought even when she turns to him.
"We do not stand without our titles, lady," he warns.
She does not stand up, nor apologize. Neither do her Blades. "I do not know that I still have a title to stand with. Lord Gwyndolin was not...pleased, with our failure."
"What did you tell him?" Lies to cover her back, perhaps, the blame cast on him?
"He already knew it all," says the knightess. "But I do not understand how it could be so."
"Perhaps another of your Blades returned before you."
"No. None that marched with us would have retreated at the start nor run ahead of us at the…end. Not without my orders." There is a bitter note in her voice. "I had to rest at my bonfire, before I reported here. But he...Lord Gwyndolin knew before I even spoke to him."
He sighs for this distraction. "Perhaps Princess Gwynevere sent a messenger. You are wasting my time."
The silver armored Blades all shake their heads. No such person has entered the temple. Vindicated, the sullen knightess rubs at a spot of blood on her gauntlet. It reminds him how dirty his own armor must be. "I had always assumed Gwyn's children needed us as their intermediaries in such matters. But I am finding myself mistaken about the Lords in many things these past few days."
"It is not for you to question the Lords. And I did not come here to listen to your speculations."
"Then for what?"
"You and I must have words about our next plan of attack. Since you did not retrieve the ring from the traitor, it seems only fitting to me you pledge yourself to a second attempt. Under my direction, of course, and with a suitable force at our backs."
The Knightess makes a humorless sound. "You and Gwyndolin seem to agree that this is my fault. But I was not the one who led us into slaughter, nor who ordered the retreat." The few Blades around her whisper to each other in un-humble tones.
"Be careful how you speak," says the Dragonslayer.
The Lady of the Darkmoon stands. "So should you. Let us move this elsewhere before you throw down a gauntlet you can no longer wear—and before witnesses, at that." She walks past him, showing him her back. Ornstein turns and snatches a spear that one of the Blades has shouldered. It is a silver knight's spear—a decent weapon, one that he is familiar with from his undistinguished days. The disarmed Blade attempts a protest, but the Dragonslayer leaves without waiting to hear it. None of the Blades follow him or their mistress.
He joins the Dame as she is peering over the edge of the platform and into the vast lower recesses of Anor Londo—it has been countless years since Ornstein walked those streets, long deserted now. He plants the spear-butt by her foot to break her trance, and she turns to look at the weapon, but makes no comment. He does. "How manybrave spears can you muster for this task, lady?"
"Before last night I could have brought two score." Her helmet tilts up to him, accusing. "But they were all led into a fire."
He scoffs. "Fire? Is the fire not what warms the Undead in their time of need? As a keeper, you would know that better than any of them."
"You are a foul, foul man, Dragonslayer Ornstein."
That amuses him. "Oh? You are no good judge of men."
She jerks back aright as if hearing Solaire of Astora even tacitly referred to is a physical blow. "Don't pretend that you were not deceived as well. And do not goad me with him, I will not speak of it."
"Nonsense. You may have to give testimony if the Lords decide to demand an explanation for your failures. Gwyndolin could suspect that you two were involved, in a plot."
Her fists shake at her sides, her chest jutting suddenly forwards. "That is not your business. And there were many chances to take the Abysswalker's ring, for both you and I."
He thinks of the grave, of the white wolf, of the dead giant. And his amusement sours, and his missing arm screams as if that dog were still devouring it. "I was wounded."
She jabs a finger in his direction like one of her rapier strikes. He once knew a woman who favored small weapons, though hers were cutting blades, not piercing. "So you were," she says. "But such an honorable captain, never doubting his odds against a few of the lowly, forest dwelling undead, you would never flee. Never scurry away into the night with your tail between your legs. My lord."
"Remember who you are speaking to." He thumps his new spear again. It fits easily in his fingers—one never forgets. "Remember, and watch your words."
The Darkmoon Knightess swipes the air as if to brush his words away. "I have watched my words long enough. I devoted myself body and soul to Lord Gwyndolin—to the Lords—but one failure, one sign of weakness, and I am nothing but a human to him, to be chastised and dismissed like a dog. As if I do not suffer every hour with this curse, as if I have not sacrificed..." he hears her throat click "—and sacrificed, and…by the Lords. All of you, the same…" The words trail off into stunned silence, as if she cannot believe them herself.
Her gall, her blasphemy, they are near too much."You should be grateful the Darksun did not demand your head for your failure. If you were my knightess, you can be sure I would not be so lenient."
Her breaking is an almost audible thing.
"Solaire was right about you." She points into his eyes, stabbing again, her voice envenomed. "Would that I had listened, had never helped you and your plotting of a goddess in that madness, those killings—so many might have lived. So much could have been preserved, and Lord Gwyndolin would not—"
He interrupts her easily. "Whatsoever he said today, Lord Gwyndolin was right about you. Do not forget that I was there to watch as you moaned and wretched all the way back to this city; you could not strike a single blow against your traitor brother for all of your weeping, and you let all our work slip through your fingers for the life of one man."
"Solaire of Astora was my friend!" It is almost a scream. And Ornstein's hears his own voice, almost a whisper.
"He was a sinner and a liar and a traitor and a coward."
"He was more a knight than you."
Ornstein kicks her to the ground and drives his spear all the way through her chest. There is a cracking sound, and her armor buckles around the blow. Then he leaves the spear planted as he crouches, his fingers dragging down the haft to lever it into the flesh below like a bloody pry bar. She lets out a belated gasp of surprise and pain, but it is far too late to do her any good.
"For shame." He catches his breath, ragged, and peers down into her visor, behind which he imagines that ugly face twisted with pain. "Such words coming from a Blade of the Darkmoon—what would your saint say if he could hear you now?" He twists the spear until she screams, animal screams. "Good, there, that is a more fitting sound. Bring that to Lord Gwyndolin to show him your repentance. They say he is the only thing in Lordran that can tolerate the disgusting deformities of your curse—it is no wonder that Solaire would not give the ring to such a hideous monster of a woman, once he saw your true face. Perhaps your face was the final thing that pushed him into madness after all." Then he stands and braces a boot on her helmet's visor to pull his weapon free, buckling it slightly with the force. The knightess folds around the emptied wound in her chest and an estoc falls to the ground, bare. He did not even see her draw it. There is movement from the temple, growing shouts of consternation behind him, the clattering of stolen silver armor. She lies gurgling and shuddering on the ground. Her movements show no signs of slowing. Perhaps she will live, then. Perhaps not.
It does not matter, because he should never have bothered to come here at all; there are but a few left in this Covenant. As she said, they are initiates or weaklings not fit to bring to battle. Another closed door. Time wasted while the Forest Hunters regroup. A used-up Covenant of fools and cowards.
He leaves as quickly as he can.