From Ashes to Dust

Prologue

A/N: So, this is my first time ever actually attempting to write a long story. I've done some shorter works before, but I absolutely adore playing Dark Souls 3, and have gotten quite into RWBY in the last year. The question of "What if my DS3 character ended up in RWBY?" popped up in my head, and my overactive imagination started coming up with interactions during key events… and then a backstory. And then more, and more and more, to the point where I had a story building in my head, and I decided to take a shot at writing it. So without further adieu, let's light this bonfire and get the show on the road.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth. I only own my own OC.

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Darkness. That was all they saw, all they heard, all they felt, all they knew, for the longest time. A suffocating darkness, only occasionally pierced by the echoes of memories, the voices of friends and foes long gone. And yet, they held on, they remembered those snippets of conversation that broke the void they were in.

A woman, directing her towards a futile quest.

"The bonfire will take thee to Lothric…"

An older, more weathered voice.

"Prithee be careful. I don't want to see my work squandered."

A lost friend in grief, a thief that had gave all they had stolen to those less fortunate than them.

"Heavens… she was already dead…"

A jovial man, getting on in his years, yet still in his prime.

"Ah, pardon me, I didn't see you there. I was absorbed in my thoughts. I am Siegward, a knight of Catarina!"

A woman scarred by her past, yet still pushing on to avenge the losses of those left behind. They knew that drive all too well.

"I am Anri, another Unkindled, seeking the Lord Aldrich, with my companion Horace. Don't mind him, though, he's not very talkative."

A right bastard, yet that voice brought a begrudging sense of respect, and possibly even camaraderie.

"Now now, let's put the blade down. We can talk this out. It was the armor, you see! It made me do those awful things. Besides, there was no harm done! The giant was already dead! I'm on my knees here, for goodness sake…"

Another woman, with a soft, melodious voice. And familiar, oh so familiar, as was the sense of raw hurt that came with it.

"... then I will offer my sign. Blessings of the moon upon… you look familiar - you! How did you escape the Fall of Irithyll?"

"It took you long enough to recognize me, Siris. I was beginning to think you wouldn't."

That one… was their voice, right? They were sure it was. That memory brought more forth.

Anri's voice again, and their voice responding.

"Oh, Horace, where could you have gone?!"

"Uhh, Anri? Anri? Gwyn to Anri? Anri! For gods' sake, look down woman!

"Horace? Horace! How are we going to get over the-"

"I had Grierat steal some rope. Quite a lot of it in fact…."

"Thank Gwyn for magical equipment storage. Poor sod might have gone hollow if we had to find the long way down. Not that I don't intend to find the long way down and explore it later… though if you don't stop hugging him that hard, you might end up killing him anyways, Anri."

A wizened old man, clad in crow's feathers carrying the art of flame within his hands.

"By the gods! The primal pyromancies of Izalith itself! I'll be sure to unravel them in just a moment!"

"I look forward to it, Cornyx you old crow."

That same thief... Greirat, that was his name, they recalled.

"That was a close one. I might have died if it wasn't for that peculiar Onion knight. Though he did make an amazing Siegbrau… Anyways, go on, have a gander!"

A blind girl, scarcely an adult, yet willing to sacrifice all that she was to become a Keeper of Flame.

"Oh, Champion of Ash, do you wish to hear a tale?"

That jovial voice, that had been lost in thought, shouting out once more, this time with grief tinged in his voice.

"Yhorm, old friend… I Seigward, of the Knights of Catarina, have come to fulfill my promise. Let the sun shine upon this Lord of Cinder! HIYAAAAAAAAAA!"

This time, the voice of a scholar, a hard earned friend, and their response to him.

"My my! The sorceries of the Prodigious Big Hat Logan! Wherever did you find this?"

"The Profaned Capital. And by the gods, it was hard to sneak down to the lake and slip into the dungeons without being noticed by the Pontiff's attack dogs."

Pontiff. That title, it brought a new feeling. It brought hate.

It brought more memories, this time of a pale, frail woman languishing in the cell of a dungeon, scarcely able to look up and believe that someone would save her after all that time.

"Yet you would still save me? My, you're no ordinary woman. I am Karla, though you'd already know that. I saw you with the other Darkmoon Blades that put me here in the first place, after all. Though that's in the past, and you are letting me out."

Yes, she remembered that now. Her covenant, the reason behind her drive to kill the Tyrant Sulyvahn, the satisfaction at seeing the smug stance he had falter before he perished, and as she continued with Anri and Horace, the promise she had made to herself to save the two she had left behind. The apprehension she felt when they found Siris at the old Darkmoon tomb, disturbingly empty, and when they traversed the unseen path. The shout of joy when the figure at the chair on the tower turned and recognized her.

"Vyliria? Ho - omph!"

"Yorshka! Thank Gwyn you're alive!"

"But the Tyrant -"

"He's dead. Horace drove his halberd into his kneecap while Anri distracted his clone, and I slit the bastard's throat."

"Then, my brother? Did you find him? Is Gwyndolin safe?"

"I don't know yet. We haven't found him, but we haven't checked the Cathedral yet. The man-eater Aldrich has taken up residence in Anor Londo, but I had to check here first. Stay for the time being, we'll return after we finish the abominable Lord."

That was her name. Vyliria, of House Avalon, of the city of Irithyll in the Boreal Valley. The days she studied and trained under the moonlit sky, before the Fall. Her brothers and sisters in the Blades of the Darkmoon. Her first mission outside the city, learning beside Siris, under a more senior knight. She remembered her return to the city all that time later, she remembered her devastation when she found the late blacksmith, and she remembered when… when…

"Aldrich, Devourer of Men, you will return to your throne, in flesh or in Cinders," Anri had said. Her sword burned from charcoal pine resin, and Horace's Halberd crackled with the gold pine resin Vyliria had given him. Siris stood with her estoc ready, glowing with Darkmoon light.

The disgusting mass of flesh, bones, and organs rippling across the floor began to burble on the other side of the room, and from is a mass emerged, and as Aldrich sloughed off its upper half, the puppeted figure beneath was revealed, in all their desiccated, agonized, bloodied glory.

A shocked and horrified grunt from Horace.

"That's… no, it can't be," in Anri's voice.

Siris stood silent in shock.

"...Gwyndolin?" Vyliria spoke in a small voice.

The last god of Anor Londo shrieked in agony, seemingly fighting himself, even as he steadied into a fighting stance. Vyliria found her voice again.

"Aldrich, Devourer of Gods… I'm going to make you suffer…"

Then… no... it hurt, she didn't want to remember this, she floundered, and grasped for something, anything else, and latched onto the first memory that came; a conversation with a burnt husk of a Lord named Ludleth.

"We tried everything we could for her… but the Eyes show a world without fire, so I willed myself a Lord to change that fate. What is thy intent?"

Vyliria had given the Firekeeper the Eyes, and told her that while she wasn't sure what she truly wanted, that after Anor Londo, she had begun to doubt her quest. The next memory to drift by was when she returned to the Watcher's Mausoleum, and her subsequent battle with Hawkwood the Deserter, and its immediate aftermath.

"So this is it? Very well, you have proven you are far more Dragon than I."

"Hawkwood. You're an arse. No longer crestfallen, but an arse. You couldn't have waited two godsdamned minutes before you started swinging, could you? Just take the stone. I don't even want it. I'm not interested in the Dragons. Have it to yourself. Now if you excuse me, I saw a gigantic bell at the Peak, and I've been dying to ring it."

The memory faded, and another took its place.

She wandered down the path to the Cleansing Chapel, the first time she had been to the Cathedral of the Deep in a very long time. Patches had seemed oddly distant, and surprisingly remorseful when she had brought news of Grierat's death in Lothric Castle. Yet before he had packed up shop and left, he had told Vyliria about having seen "a nutty old cook" in the Cathedral. Curiosity killed the cat, but unlike felines, she had a Darksign, and the theoretically infinite lives that came with it, so she might as well get something useful out of the damned thing. The old man babbling seeming nonsense, she expected. Getting pulled into the scrap of a Painting, she did not.

She remembered, not quite fondly, her time in the Painting. Especially that Gwyndamed giant wolf. The mangy overgrown mutt vaguely reminded her of the legends of the great wolf Sif, if Sif had been inebriated to an absurd degree by some manner of powdery white stimulant. After murdering and looting her way through the forest and ruins, she had descended towards a town she had seen, not trusting the rickety bridge across the chasm. In the village… well, it was far from pleasant, but that library by far outshone the rest in that regard.

"I've seen your kind, time and time again. Every fleeing man must be caught. Every secret must be unearthed. Such is the conceit of the self-proclaimed seeker of truth. But in the end, you lack the stomach. For the agony you'll bring upon yourself..."

It was the fifth time she had heard that speech out of the mouth of Sir Vilhelm, and while it was quite impressive, at this point it was just getting on her nerves...

That had been rather vexing, but it was so satisfying to send his head flying with a horizontal sweep from the Moonlight Greatsword. It was more satisfying to grab his Onyx Blade. And it was outright cathartic when…

"AND STAY! DEAD THIS TIME!" She had cried as she pulled her weapon from the chest of Lady Elfriede, the black flames sputtering out as she collapsed and her grip on her Scythes slackened. She panted from the exertion in the burning chapel, the phantom of the Slave Knight Gael fading away, before looking down at the weapons of her fallen foe and grabbing them, then looking across the room to the bonfire… or bonfires? She lit the first one, and with a healthy dose of trepidation approached the second…

The next recollection was in tomb in a city at the end of not only the world, but also the end of time itself.

"There's some awfully fine treasure, right over that ledge."

"Lapp… I knew you were Patches the whole time. You have the same voice, and Lapp means Patch in one of the languages the northern warriors use. I'm not getting kicked off a cliff."

"Bloody hell, a man manages to come back from nearly going hollow, and you can't let him have even a little fun? Besides, the only way out is down there anyways."

"... Fine. But only because of how ridiculously adept you were with that shield when we fought that giant-arse demon, and you'd better have a damned good speech once you kick me down there…"

The Ringed City was gone by the next memory. She stared across the ruins in the endless desert of ash, as the grotesque figure that had once been an ally stood up from the corpse it had been consuming to bring its gaze to meet her own. A hand reached towards her, even as the other gripped its jagged, chipped, and blunted sword.

"What… still here? Hand It over… that Thing… your Dark Soul… For my Lady's Painting…"

"Gael? It's me, Vyliria! Why in the gods name did you do this? The whole city, Filianore… WHY?!"

She reflected on how it came to this, even as she desperately dodged Gael's first strikes. She had gone with the Knightess Shira, to fight the gods damned dragon by the name of Midir that she had knocked beneath The Ringed City. She had lost count of how many times she had died to the wyrm, but she knew it was at least two-score and seven more. She had run towards the dragon as its legs finally gave out from yet another strike to its face, and screamed with exertion as the Moonlight Greatsword was thrust into an eye, and ripped free in a burst of gore and teal light. When the beast finally died, she was ecstatic as she went back to Firelink to transpose the soul. She was even more ecstatic when the sheer power of the soul let her obtain both a weapon and a spell. That joy was ripped away the second she had come back to the inner wall, and was nearly bowled over by Shira, who cried out that someone was attempting to enter Filianore's Church. They had arrived to find Halflight's corpse, Vyliria not even breaking stride as her undead kleptomania demanded she grab the shiny spear fragment clutched in a bloody hand. They had just gotten up the elevator, and started up the stairs, when there was a blinding white light… When she could see again she was alone. And Filianore… there was no helping a corpse.

After quite a few deaths, she dodged under yet another strike, and threw herself back into the fray. Friede's Greatscythe swiped across Gael's neck, yet no spray of blood erupted. Only a trickle of a black life-fluid dripped from the wound.

"Ahh… is this the Blood? The Blood of the Dark Soul?"

It slowly stood up, raising its sword into a ready stance. Despite seemingly regaining some semblance of sanity, Vyliria knew that the thing standing before her was no longer Slave Knight Gael, but merely a vessel for tattered scraps of the Dark Soul of Man.

Their duels to the death continued on, and she lost again and again, yet always returned. On yet another attempt, even as his gods damned cape smacked her again, she readied herself for another death, knowing she couldn't evade the next strike. But that strike never came as Gael staggered back with a hand to his face, even as another lightning arrow went for his head.

Even with Shira the fight had been an impossibly close thing, blue lightning striking all around, Gael's sword flying at absurd speeds while he somersaulted over them while firing his repeating crossbow, yet Vyliria had managed to leap onto Gael's back when a screech from the Crucifix of the Mad King staggered him. Standing on his shoulders, she crossed the blades of her scythes across his throat, and pulled...

She remembered her eventual return to the Grand Archives, thoroughly explored save for its final room. She remembered her fights against the final Lord quite well. All twenty-three of them. And she remembered watching Lothric collapse atop his brother when his wounds became too much to bear.

"Mark my words, Ashen One. You alone, remain among the accursed..."

And she remembered as she made her last decision within the Kiln, spurred on by the future she had glimpsed in the Ringed City, and called forth the Firekeeper, even as she watched the First Flame finally fade. Without the animating force that had brought her back to Link it, the Champion of Ash collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. And yet…

Why was she still here? She shouldn't have outlived the Flame that had returned her. But she still thought, more and more often now. There was something trying to pierce through the darkness around her. And a new sensation… she… felt? It was getting fuzzy, yet that new sensation began to grow. She latched onto it like a drowning man does to flotsam. The darkness yielded further, and she felt as if she was being dragged upwards.

And for the first time in an era, a ragged breath was drawn into a body.

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A/N: So, some unique history for the Ashen Star of this show, but the beauty of Dark Souls is that the lore is deliberately left sparse, so the player builds their own story. And on the subject of Dark Souls stories, as long as you don't contradict what is explicitly stated in the games, nearly any story, or backstory, you come up with is technically correct, or at the very least not wrong. And you most certainly haven't seen her whole story yet. So welcome to Vyliria of Avalon, my first character for DS3, the first Souls game I played… well technically the second, because I rage quit on Iudex Gundyr, deleted the character, and left for a couple months. Then I came back in the summer and created another character by the same name, and began the slow but sure process of gitting gud, like the scrub I was. On the small off-chance you've heard her name before, due to various lore and game mechanics contributions I gave to fil03 when he was writing Twin Embers (a purely DS fanfic, go give it and the prequel Twin Humanities a read if you feel like, I loved them), she ended up at the top of Roster of Knights in that story. It is my eternal regret that I misspelled her name in the PM, so while she's been immortalized in that story, it's with the wrong spelling. So I'll just press F for myself there. Anyways, with 2200 words of backstory and exposition out of the way, now we can actually get going on the story.

P.S. Due to a person complaining about it, I will say that review responses do considerably bloat the word count that it says on the web-page. Fortunately, I kept a wordcount as I was writing, and this story WITHOUT including review response is between 255k-260k words. Just as a heads up for you all.

P.P.S. Yes, I basically remastered the prologue so it read better. Just in case anyone read the origional, and then went back for whatever reason, and is now confused. A full/partial rewrite is on my to-do list, but that's after I finish the rest of the series.