Farum Azula.

He wasn't quite sure how the name came to him. It simply did. As he inversely scaled the disintegrating walls of the harrowing ruins, constantly teetering on the edge of plunging over a collapsed railing into the void of whorling storms that filled every gap between the crumbling ledges, his delicate footwork was addled mid-funambula by the red-hot pike of realization unceremoniously drilling the name into his mind. With his concentration interrupted, his foot went out from underneath him, nearly sending him careening over the edge; only by snatching the aging spear of an attacking undead beastman and pulling as hard as he could did he manage to right himself, swapping places with the skeleton and leaving him the last one standing atop the makeshift platform.

Farum Azula. What an exotic name, Ash thought, one certainly not native to the continent far to the west. Though such did not perplex him—he knew almost as soon as his eyes had finished taking this place in for the first time that he had found the city of dragons. Indeed, the only human-like inhabitants of this ancient place were the unholy pair of Godskin clerics that so staunchly blocked his way—if he and Bernahl's paths had not crossed at the foot of the altar the unholy duo had called home, they likely would have cost him more than his fair share of fiery deaths—and a lone knight of the Crucible who was brought to their knees when the gnarled dagger strapped to Ash's hip effortlessly batted their sword to the side.

Weathering the impasse harrowed by fitful warbirds and barrages of lightning, Ash came upon a tower, perhaps the closest to an intact structure in the whole of this floating city. At the foot of the building, the entrance to a tomb awaited him. The Tarnished warrior had a feeling that whatever he was here for awaited him at the peak of the climb, but in spite of that, he felt a strange pull beckoning him to investigate what lay in the opposite direction—to face the ledge behind himself and venture down instead of up. He obeyed the impulse, descending a haphazard staircase of earthen platforms until he came to a halt atop the fractured wall of what he assumed to be a stadium. Standing in the center of one of several shallow hollows that lined the extravagant floor-wall, Ash folded his arms and took a good, long look at what raged before him.

There was nothing left onto which to step forth. The fragment of a structure underneath his feet was the end of the line. Instead of more debris, Ash now gazed upon a gargantuan vortex of wind. On his journey through this forgotten city, Ash had laid eyes upon such a tornado or two, but this particular stormcloud was nothing short of massive. Even Miquella's own Haligtree seemed diminutive by comparison; Ash briefly wondered how enough sunlight filtered through the swirling behemoth's dark grey clouds to illuminate this far down.

Perhaps the great storm's raging winds were the forces that lifted the ruins of Farum Azula off the ground to begin with. That seemed the closest to a reasonable explanation for the existence of this aimlessly floating city.

But even if it maintained Farum Azula's frayed infrastructure, Ash doubted it would be wise to step off the ledge and dive headfirst into the tumultuous winds. So why, then, did he come all the way down here, with no apparent way back up? What exactly was down here that beckoned him so?

From where he stood, he hadn't the foggiest idea. The exasperated huff that left his lungs was drowned out entirely by the tornado before him.

Ash folded his arms over his chest. The nearest stronghold of grace from here was… a bit of a ways behind him, he reflected; namely, it lay just behind that vexing gauntlet of hawks and lightning. Just his luck: he'd have to endure that chore yet again. Ash heaved a disappointed sigh that made his shoulders sag—and when that simple act brought to his mind that his chest was puffing really quite heavily, he realized just how arduous constantly jumping from platform to platform while contending with otherworldly foes had been. He was tired. He needed a moment to catch his breath. Sparing a quick glance around him, he shook his head.

"Blast it," he muttered, as he moved to seat himself within the stony pit in which he currently stood. "Might as well make the most of this nook."

He reclined onto his back, staring up at what little of the sky filtered in through the dark winds of the tornado. Should he have returned back to his golden bonfire to rest? Perhaps, but grace or no grace, this decimated, windswept land was not exactly keen on sparing an intruder like him a cozy bedchamber or even a soft patch of earth upon which to lay. A vaguely concave divot in the floor next to a storm that drowned out all other sounds was the best he had if he didn't want to outright leave this place and come back.

… Then again, what was stopping him from doing that?

Ash folded his hands over his chest. No need, he decided. It would only be for a few minutes; besides, a disagreeable bed was the least of the many trials he'd endured. He sank as snugly as he realistically could into the smooth stone beneath him, staring listlessly at the glint of sky that filtered through the darkness of the tornado. The vortex in question filled most of his vision, the winds spiraling in a way that was simultaneously uniform and totally chaotic.

Strange, he thought, as he found his eyes growing heavy in the brief respite, staring up at the ripping storm far above—for a brief moment right before his eyes drifted shut, he could've sworn he'd seen the rotation of the wind starting to slow down.

—

He did not wake up in the same place he'd closed his eyes. At least, that was what he believed at first. A groggy stirring to life quickly became a scramble to his feet as he realized he no longer recognized where he was. What was once a small, fragmented island under the crown of a great whirlwind had become a vast colosseum, one whose floor alone dwarfed the arenas of the mainland—though, there was not much else to the stadium than said floor. There were no rafters, no ins or outs, and certainly no ceiling, the whole of the stage exposed to the tumultuous, yet eerily quiet, storm above. Lightning flashed far overhead, but there was little thunder, and the clouds themselves held unnaturally still.

It took Ash some time to take in his baffling new surroundings, enough so that he did not immediately register the being at the other end of the stadium. As his eyes moved from the floor and walls to the sky, he saw them: smack in the center of the arena, floating motionlessly above the walls, hung a giant dragon. Ash bolted down to snatch up the sword he'd left laying there, but as he hoisted it back up and returned his attention to the beast, it became quite clear that it did not know he was there.

It seemed to be slumbering. In midair, somehow. Granted, the dragon did not suspend itself with the deliberate beats of its own great wings, instead hanging motionlessly as if dangling from some invisible string. It looked, truthfully, quite silly. And yet, it instilled a kind of unease in Ash. For as absurd as it was to have a giant sleeping dragon just hovering there in defiance of gravity, it only added to the surreality of the place in which Ash now found himself. From the floating dragon to the silent lightning, to the smooth, dustless floors and walls in perfect condition, everything felt so… still. It was too clean. Too quiet.

Just where exactly was he?

Ash let his colossal sword fall, grasping the hilt and propping himself up with it. His gaze fell upon the weapon, whereupon he noticed something that had him giving a start. The light that struck the silhouette of it, the way it bent, it…

The elusive somberstones he would find buried between the rocks of caves and tunnels all went to improving his brutish yet extravagant greatsword, including the single colorless dragon scale he'd plucked from the frozen corpse of an ogre in nun's garb. A stone, the Misbegotten smith of the Roundtable had told him, that could harness the power of the ancient dragons and warp time itself. And sure enough, when Hewg returned the armament to its owner, Ash saw at once the way light seemed to refract and distort on the very edges of the blade.

That had been proof enough for Ash. But now, as he gazed upon his trusty weapon, he could see that the otherworldly warping on the edges had intensified. Moreover, he realized, the way the light bent in the presence of his blade seemed to… connect with the world around it, joining seamlessly with the rays moving through the still air as if the rest of the environment were bending light in a synchronous way.

Bending light, or… bending time?

At once, Ash's gaze snapped up to the sleeping dragon overhead. It occurred to him just then that the dragon scale used to grant his weapon its timebending properties did not just come from any old mine. No, according to Hewg, that stone was said to be a scale of the ancient Dragonlord, the Elden Lord before Marika.

The ancient dragons of Farum Azula were fearsome creatures that towered over their meagre mainland descendants, and the one that hung there now put even those majestic beasts to shame. Its two heads pointed towards the sky; from where he stood, Ash could just make out the golden glimmer of a third, stumpy neck. Clearly, the dragon was old and well past its prime, but in spite of that, its look boasted power and ferocity that laughed in the face of every other dragon Ash had laid eyes upon… most of them, anyways.

A dragon unlike any other, sequestered away in a private chamber that bent the world in the same way Ash's sword did… Was it him? Was this the Dragonlord?

It seemed impossible. But so did many things Ash had seen in his life. If anything, such a preposterous fairytale served to explain exactly where he was: He'd stopped to rest within the Dragonlord's chambers, but the dethroned king had barricaded the room with time itself. Wherever Ash was now, it was not within the same timeline as where he was before—if he was even in a timeline anymore. Was he outside it? Everything was so still. Motionless, as if frozen, absent of time's guiding hand.

A chuckle made his chainmail shudder. Timebending. He was sure of it. That was what—

"Timebending… of course. Well, for once in our life, let us be optimistic."

Ash's snicker stopped. His mind flashed back to the lip of the Giants' forge, where a conversation had taken place.

"The needle is incomplete. Should it mature, it may have the strength to meet the measure of the Scarlet Rot. But that could take centuries, or millennia."

His bemused mirth faded. A thorn-wrapped hand placed itself delicately upon his helmed temple. Three fingers rubbed his head anxiously as he thought.

Miquella's needle. The very one lodged within Malenia's bosom right this moment—give or take an abstraction from time. One that was incomplete and imperfect. He had seen for himself the limits of the device's capabilities when he'd pulled the Empyrean from the wailing dunes of Caelid. The needle was simply young. It needed time to grow. But that time was a span to which few would lay witness. To shorten that span, to turn the relief into a cure, one would need…

"... to cheat time itself."

An absurd prospect. But now, here Ash was, in the company of the Dragonlord, in a storm beyond time. He stopped to peer up at the slumbering beast; he had not realized he'd begun to pace as his mind worked.

He had no idea where he was temporally. Was he in the present? The past? The future? Beyond the limits of all three? Time didn't make sense here—if it was even here at all.

It was a far-fetched idea. But…

Something bubbled in Ash's stomach. Not mead, nor food, but a sensation. A nervous one that tightened his innards and stressed his abdomen, but also one that filled his chest with a giddy flutter. A tension, but a good one. One he almost didn't recognize: Excitement.

Perhaps this sequestered colosseum was his key to putting an end to Malenia's rot for good. The proof was tenuous, but to achieve a victory so profound… he had to try.

The hand rubbing his temple moved to rest upon his chest. First, he needed to fetch her. He closed his eyes as the glimmer of grace inside him reached out to lost fragments across the Lands Between. One in particular, at the roots of the Haligtree, shined brighter than the rest behind his eyelids.

That one. It lay just beyond Malenia's chambers. He'd fetch her, then bring her back here where the needle could—

The ground beneath him trembled. In a flash, the twinkles of lost grace vanished from his mind. Ash opened his eyes, which darted around the empty stadium as confusion bubbled in his chest—though when his eyes flitted across the arena, that confusion quickly turned to dismay. The great beast that had hung there, curled up in a ball and suspended in the air, was straightening and descending before the Tarnished's eyes. Giant stone wings unfurled to reveal a body that mimicked the cracked and crumbling architecture of Farum Azula. Great swathes of rock broke and fell away all along the dragon's body to reveal gold-colored flesh that, even in its marred state, shone with an almost translucent glossy sheen. The two serpentine heads, once pointed to the sky, came level as he floated down to the floor. With his wings out of the way, Ash could see that more than one severed stump of a neck snaked around the dragon's torso, stiff and motionless as if they had fused to his body after his other heads had been lost.

The whoosh of air that had ripped Ash from his concentration was the gust of wind that the dragon's wings had generated when they unfurled. Powerful though it may have been, once the Dragonlord touched down, the reverberating tremor it sent through the stadium was far greater—so great that Ash found himself holding an arm out to maintain his balance as the ground quaked beneath him. Once he'd righted himself, he looked back up at the dragon to see both remaining heads staring straight at him. Even from down here, Ash could see the righteous anger that flared in the dragon's four golden eyes.

The Dragonlord had awoken. And it did not like what greeted him.

Placidusax glared down at Ash for only a moment longer before raising both heads to the sky and unleashing a twinned roar so loud it drowned out Ash's own thoughts. His helm filled with the noise and rattled painfully against his skull. His left hand shot up and grasped the helmet to hold it steady while a grunt of discomfort, noiseless amidst the din of the dragon's roar, issued from his chest. Fortunately, the roar only lasted so long, and it only took a few disorienting moments for things to die down and leave Ash standing there, ears ringing and partially dazed.

Unfortunately, the cacophony had drowned out the sound of new, menacing storm clouds coalescing over Ash's head.

It was only when a flash of red pulsated near the top of his vision did he look up to see a swirling nimbus meeting his gaze. An angry crimson glow emanated from the center, brightening and burgeoning more and more as Ash watched.

There was an earsplitting clap of thunder. The knight sighed.

"Give me a damned break," he muttered as the roiling lightning beamed down from the sky and razed him to dust.

Malenia traced a thumb along the cold palm of her prosthesis. The golden limb lay uselessly in her lap; without the aid of Miquella or the fire of a forge, the mangling inflicted by Mohg's spear was irreversible.

The Empyrean shook her head to herself. The last time her arm had been this badly damaged was in her battle against Radahn, when his sword had cleaved it from her body. She recalled, if dimly, how Finlay had affixed Emma's gauntlet to her in place of her true prosthesis in the wake of that fateful battle. The same gauntlet that, in the early days of her slumber, had been reforged and refined by the smiths of Elphael's army into a proper limb. The same gauntlet that now lay shattered and crumpled in her lap this very moment.

She wondered where her old arm was now, and if she would ever be able to use this one again. Better to be one-armed than one-legged, but the notion of being a left-handed swordswoman did not leave her feeling tickled. If nothing else, at least, she could take comfort in the hope that, should she ever need to raise her sword again, it would be held in the hand of a third iteration of the prosthesis, made by Miquella himself.

Malenia's flesh-and-blood hand released the golden one. It fell onto her lap as she brought her fingers to the twisted, gnarled bark that entwined up from her resting place, merging into the errant roots that enwreathed Miquella. Her heart sang with relief to know for certain that he was there, right where he belonged, but at the same time, a lump grew in her throat. He should have been there the whole time. He shouldn't have been sealed away in some blood-drenched ruin, languishing in the vile perturbations of his treacherous half-brother while his home rotted away into nothing. But he had, and it was because of her. It was Malenia who abandoned her brother and his life's work to fight a pointless war, her who had let him be plucked from his home and locked up within the palace of blood, her who had sat by and done nothing while he suffered, her who had corrupted his home and its people to the very core.

Malenia's hand balled up into a fist and pressed anxiously into the bark of the tree. When Miquella awoke, things would be right again. But there would be hell to pay when he did.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

A disturbance roused her from her thoughts. It came from the entrance of Miquella's chambers, approaching her in a rapid, thumping rhythm. Malenia heard the swishing and rattling of chainmail alongside the clanking of steel plates thumping into the earth, a cacophony of armored footsteps–footsteps that she recognized.

"Malenia!"

The aforementioned Empyrean flicked her gaze forward as the voice of the visitor confirmed her intuitions. Ash slowed as he neared until he stood just a few meters away, in the same spot he'd sat before her and opened her eyes. Malenia wanted to smile just a tad in spite of herself, but she had an inkling that for him to return this soon could only be so good a sign.

"Welcome back, fair knight," she greeted. "What brings you here in such haste?"

"I… found something," he announced. There was a tension in his tone that gave Malenia pause. "Something that could change things."

"Change?" Malenia echoed. "Change what?"

A tense silence. Then, "Empyrean, would you follow me beyond the Haligtree's branches once more?"

She pursed her lips. Her blind gaze drifted away, towards the husk that cradled Miquella's cocoon. A hand reached towards the arm of her chair and grazed along the bell that rested there.

She knew she could call upon Finlay, and she knew that with Mohg gone, the broken and lordless Lands Between would do little to even come near the snowfield the Haligtree called home. But to finally have Miquella back after so much useless, oblivious waiting, only to turn tail and leave him once more…

"Fair knight, there are many things you have shown yourself to be," Malenia carefully said. "A tenacious warrior. A resilient knight… A confounding madman, at times. But if you are nothing else, you are direct, and you are honest. Prithee, what is it you wish to show me?"

"... What I wish is to avoid leaping to conclusions," Ash answered with equal caution. "What I think I've discovered–I have only a most tenuous grasp on what it may truly be, and an even fainter wisp of conviction in what it means for us should my suspicions hold ground. But if you should know: I believe I may have found a cure for your illness."