"Saint…"
Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Lord of Cinder, stirred from slumber. He had lost much of his bloated body in the journey from his tomb in the Cathedral of the Deep to his new home, the Sunless Cathedral of of his boyhood legends. The austere beauty of the place was gone, buried beneath the sludge of his putrefying flesh and the skeletons of the countless men he had devoured. The diaphanous banners of the Nameless Moon glimmered in the cold light, shining silver above the oozing pitch and pitted statues. Nothing of the old gods of Flame were left in the Saint's wake.
The Silver Knights of myth had been devoured, their armor filled with Aldrich's living flesh and made to serve the Deep. His faithful Deacons kept the grounds of the old capital from intrusion. The Twilight King's own bishop had betrayed him and ruled over the lower city with iron fist and velvet glove as Pontiff. His abomination 'sister' was imprisoned in the White Tower. The last deity himself faced a far direr fate.
Aldrich, Devourer of Gods, rose from reclining. Only, his shape had long since given way to the formless ooze – in truth, his body lay across the whole of the chamber. What rose was all that was left of the Nameless Moon, Twilight King of Anor Londo. The body was emaciated, elongated, and mottled from Aldrich's digestive fluids. Yet it still held some value. With it, he could once again hold his golden ritual scepter and was no longer completely defenseless.
He turned its eyeless head toward the source of the sound. Preemptively, he ran one of his stolen hands along the head of his scepter. Sorcerous power stained with the Dark of humanity emitted faintly from its end, taking on the form of the countless human remains which comprised his body. Great-glaive comprised of soul energy in both hands, Aldrich slithered forth on a tail of human torsos.
Where was the intruder? He couldn't smell anything over the rot and cinders.
"First thou betrayest thy covenant, and now thou seest fit to despoil the keep of the Great Lord. Didst thou dream too deeply of the waters, Saint of the Deep? Didst thou forget thy duty to Flame, Lord of Cinder?"
The voice echoed through the chamber. It resounded with the strength of a god. It was meant to be there, no matter how befouled the chamber became. The glass of the windows shuddered in the cold.
"I am the Dark Sun, Gwyndolin! Let the atonement for thy felonies commenceth!"
The chamber warped and stretched like a falling dream. Aldrich had been lessened too much in his journey. His flesh oozed ever thinner, weakening as it tried to fill the whole of the grand hall. The Saint bristled with disbelief. If his puppet could shriek in fury, he would have had it do so. He commanded the body of the Nameless Moon as he devoured the deity's soul. The Twilight King's robes had blackened with sludge, and his crown was pitted, mottled, and tarnished.
What, then, hovered at the far end of the chamber? This King was younger and fairer, clad in all white and gold, with a grand crown which held his reflection as a mockery. Fingers splitting and oozing black blood as he forced them to articulate, Aldrich held his scepter aloft and nocked a sorcery like an arrow. He loosed the violet ray, and it splintered into a thousand arrows of conjured iron as real as a nightmare.
The Twilight King revealed a bow of his own, alike made from yew and gold. He drew just one arrow, a golden lattice. It loosed with silence and a flash, the burnt umber of sunlight crossing the invisible bolt over and over like the arrow at its heart. Like a ray of sun parting the rain, the single shot hurtled through the long hallway with enough force that it scattered the soul energy. It blasted the base of the monster's tail, causing the puppet to go limp.
Aldrich boiled in fury, trying to gather up enough of his own sludge to fill the wound. Not losing any time, the amorphous beast surged forward, dragging the long-haired body of the god through the ooze. The short-haired doppelganger didn't waste a beat either. Though he didn't fire another massive shot, brass arrows danced on his fingertips. With each draw of his bow, he loosed four arrows, and while Aldrich's liquid form was resilient, it was quickly becoming as much holy metal as human bone.
With a defiant charge, the Saint of the Deep reared up, drawing his puppet to alertness and driving through the deity with his glaive of bone and souls. The Moon smiled.
"Oh, how could I have fallen to such a brute?"
The illusion dissipated. He was but a mere step to the side, but in so being, was inside the weapon's range and out of danger.
"Returnest thou to ash, false heir to Sunlight."
The eclipsed arrow tore through Aldrich's main body, ignoring the distraction of the humanoid form. The ooze crackled and popped with black smoke as sun dried the human remains to white powder. The body of the Nameless Moon fell away as the Devourer of Gods abandoned his food to try and recover as much of his power as he could. The room caught fire, then contracted as Aldrich drew himself together. The dream of the Dark Sun's endless corridor shuddered and broke like the reflection disappearing from a muddied pool.
All of Aldrich's body which had been lost throughout the cathedral came in response to his dire call. There was a faint tolling of a Bell as the pitch came alight with the power of the First Flame itself. The hideous thing surged up into a human form the size of one of the great deities, rising over the balcony high above, then collapsed into a wave. Whichever Moon was the true King became irrelevant as both bodies were swept into its current and sank to a depth which no light could illuminate.
The cold glow of the crescent outside continued to stream through the windows, even as the black covered them. Just the same, Aldrich did not realize when its color began to shift uneasily. The deep blues of night shifted to the greens of the sea. The muck shifted as currents formed beneath its surface. With a hideous slopping noise, it peeled back from the statue of the Great Lord.
"Thou hast misjudged mineself, Saint of the Deep. The Dark Sun whom you consumed kneweth only of Flame and Dark. He accepted his heritage only for the subterfuge it might provideth. I know mineself. It wast the Darkmoon which beckoned the waters of the Deep. I am the Moon which commandeth the tide!
In the name of the Dark Sun, get thee from my cathedral! Performeth thy duty to the Flame, Lord of Cinder! Thine Age of Sea willeth not come to pass!"
Gwyndolin's snakes rose from the depths of Aldrich's body like serpents while his crown broke the surface like the sun rising over the waters in the distant east. In his hands, he held the Saint's golden scepter. He raised it high and ran his palm over the back of it, tracing a current which left behind motes which gleamed like stars. Whorls of the night sky reflected in the sea formed a blade of holy moonlight. He thrust the naginata forward with a geyser of lunar force that pushed the sea of tar back against the far side of the gallery.
The fog wall broke, and Aldrich spilled through the open doors, washing away the Deacons. Gwyndolin slithered down the stained carpet of his ruined keep, driving the Deep back. He gestured with a hand, and the grand entrance opened, letting the filth wash down the ancient stairs and into the open light of the moon.
"B-Brother?"
"Brother!"
"Lifehunter, he is still fighting! Do not allow the brine to touch you!"
Yorshka, Priscilla, and Maria had made their way through the false Silver Knights and Deacons to arrive just as Aldrich burst through the doors. Their instinctive dread of the creature of the Deep had lessened with his weakness, but perhaps that was part of the Deep's insidious nature. As the Saint reached the bottom of the stairs, Priscilla took a deep breath. A slow, steady stream of deadly crystals rimmed the last step, eating away at Aldrich's body before he could drip to the city below.
Seeing what she'd done, Gwyndolin commanded the nightmare fog to rise and bound the staircase, sparks of umber sunfire reinforcing it with a fraction of the Great Lord's barrier strength. From atop the stairs, he cocked the Saint's scepter back, taking an instinctive pose he never thought he would. The Moonlight Spear arced down, driving through the bile of Aldrich's body. The sludge churned about the stuck naginata for a moment, then dispersed into souls. All that was left was the Lord's ashes and split, bloated skull.
The fog dispersed as suddenly as it had been conjured, and Gwyndolin was left with the horrifying soul of the beast. It was a deep, Deep blue, but a flicker of gold glimmered from within. The deity twirled his fingers about the soul, whipping it about like water in a bowl. It thinned as it spun, until it had given way just enough that he could pull the soul of Flame out from its heart.
This soul was pathetic and withered, just like its body had been. It was possible that with healing magic, it could be restored to its body and that with years, it could one day recover. Yet this other Dark Sun would forever live in the shadow of his former self. Gwyndolin knew he could not bear it.
In accordance with the ancient rite, he crushed the soul, and two deities became one. Gwyndolin grew older and taller, his robes tearing as his youthful body lengthened into that of a slender adult. The silver hair about his ears fell to his shoulders and straightened. He took a deep breath as his mind adapted to the experience of two divergent timelines.
"Brother, it is you!"
"Yorshka, I must apologize for having left you Sulyvahn's prisoner for so long."
He spoke naturally to the halfbreed he had never met before. It had been weeks before he finally put to rest his instinctive aversion toward Priscilla, but between his absorbed memories and newfound maturity, it was a simple matter. He felt all the more grateful to his elder sister for her patience with his moodiness.
"I see Priscilla hath helped thee in thine escape. I trust thou art getting along with thy new sister?"
"Oh, yes, Brother! She is everything I could have dreamed of!"
"Splendid. Priscilla, I hope she has not been too much of a bother."
She shook her head fervently.
"Of course not!"
Gwyndolin stretched his long fingers toward the moon, trying to grow accustomed to his new body.
"Marquessa Maria, I have some catching up to do with my sisters. Aldrich's bonfire shouldst be intact. Couldst thou maketh contact with Izalith in my place? The Prophet will haveth need of this monster's ashes, if memory serveth."
"It shall be done."
Maria bowed elegantly, then took off up the stairs, vanishing intermittently. Gwyndolin meanwhile descended at a pace that would be considered leisurely if his sisters didn't already know his snakes simply couldn't undulate any faster without tying themselves in knots. At the bottom, one of the snakes retrieved Aldrich's scepter, which had fallen over without any power to sustain the moonlight blade. He had always seemed out of place among the ancient and deeply experienced (or at least stupidly powerful) Lords, but now, he truly seemed a fitting King of the gods.
Though Priscilla was somewhat disappointed that his sudden growth would mean an end to giving her slow-moving brother piggyback rides in order to move him quickly.
"Now, sisters, I'm sure you both have a great deal to ask me. Come, let us speak in private, in the sanctity of the Great Lord's tomb. I am sure that I have some emergency provisions hidden there, which we should retrieve before rejoining the others."