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Glory to my bum ass proofreader: Solare.
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Solaire, for his part, didn't seem to have noticed John at all.
He stood at the rampart's edge with his back to them, feet planted like he'd been born on battlements, arms spread wide toward the blazing disk in the sky as if he meant to embrace it. The wind tugged at his tabard and cloak, snapping the fabric like a banner in a parade, but the knight didn't sway.
"Ahhh~!" He sighed, voice rolling in a noticeably foreign accent, words shaped with a warmth that did not belong to these Lands. "What a wonderful day! Don't you just feel the sunlight's warmth, its heavenly embrace?! Praise the Gloriful Sun!"
John went very, very still.
It wasn't just the pose. It wasn't just the voice. It wasn't even the phrase itself—though hearing it, here, on a Stormveil rampart that smelled like salt and blood and old stone, felt like someone had shoved a memory into his spine and twisted.
It couldn't be him.
It couldn't.
His brain tried to do that thing where it grabbed for the nearest reasonable explanation, and found none. The nearest explanation it wanted to grab was the one it had already used once: Patches.
But surely…
Surely even Patches wouldn't dare pull the same trick twice after being caught.
Yeah. Even that filthy, two-bit, weakling thief wasn't that stupid.
Somewhere far away from Stormveil, a certain bald man sneezed violently, rubbed his nose with a scowl, and cursed a very foreign God to these lands for his misfortune under his breath.
John didn't know that, of course.
He just stood there, staring at the knight with his arms outstretched like a man worshipping light itself, and felt his brain threaten to reboot.
'How the hell is Solaire here?' he thought, the question ricocheting around his skull like a thrown knife. 'Where did he come from? Why is he in Stormveil of all places?!'
Behind him, Millicent and Melina had followed him out onto the ramparts. Rogier had drifted after them with his usual quiet curiosity, hands folded behind his back like he was on a scholarly walk and not in the middle of an enemy fortress full of people who would normally kill him on sight.
Melina blinked slowly at John's stiff posture and wide-eyed stare.
She muttered under her breath, voice so quiet it almost got eaten by the wind.
"…I feel like we've been here before. Have we been here before?"
Millicent, in contrast, didn't bother with subtlety. She leaned forward, peering around John's shoulder at the knight's back.
"…Johnny?" she asked, slow and cautious, like she was approaching a startled animal. "Do you… recognize that guy?"
John flinched as if someone had snapped fingers in his face. The question yanked him out of the spiral just enough for him to remember he had a body and companions and a job and an ongoing existential crisis involving a goddess who had recently cried and then promptly vanished from sight.
He cleared his throat, a sound that came out far rougher than he intended.
"…Yeah." He admitted carefully, too carefully. "I… think I remember him. Hazily."
Millicent's eyebrows climbed. "Hazily?"
John nodded, keeping his gaze on Solaire's back like looking away would make the memory break.
"Like… from before." He tapped the side of his head with a finger, the universal gesture for brain stuff. "Before the amnesia. Maybe."
That was the lie that wasn't a lie, the explanation that made the least amount of nonsense for the most amount of people.
Melina blinked again, the idea clicking into place with the quiet inevitability of someone who'd had to accept a lot of weirdness since meeting him.
"…That would make the slightest bit of sense, I suppose." She said slowly.
Millicent's mouth twitched. "Only the slightest."
Melina ignored her, gaze still on John, thoughtful.
"You spoke before 'days prior.' Of experiences you can no longer fully name." She tilted her head faintly. "Perhaps this 'Astora' is where you originally hailed from, then. Before arriving in the Lands Between."
John's shoulders lifted a fraction, a half-shrug that was more "sure, why not" than agreement.
"Maybe," he said, which was about as much confirmation as he could safely offer without ripping reality in half.
Millicent opened her mouth, probably to ask something more direct and more dangerous, when Melina stepped forward and loudly coughed into her fist.
It was an overly polite cough. The kind you use to get attention in a library. It cut across the wind anyway, sharp enough that even the knight's cheerful murmuring paused.
Solaire snapped to attention like a soldier who'd heard his name called on a battlefield.
He turned, one hand instinctively drifting toward his hip, posture tightening for exactly one heartbeat… and then his whole demeanor softened like a sunrise breaking through clouds.
John's stomach dropped.
Because now he could see him properly.
Now he could see the front of the armor.
The same chainmail. The same plate. The same tabard emblazoned with the bright, stylized sunburst that had once burned itself into John's memory in a broken church in Lordran. And the helm was rounded with a narrow slit to see through, as he suspected.
"Ah!" Solaire said, cheerful as ever, as if he hadn't just been caught mid-devotion. "Well met, friends!"
He looked at Melina first, and then his gaze flicked to Millicent, then to Rogier lingering near the doorway, and finally to John, as if only now realizing there was a fifth presence.
"Oh!" he added, delighted. "And you as well! Forgive me, I was rather taken by the brilliance of this sun. One forgets the world exists when the light is so generous."
John managed to keep his face neutral through sheer force of will, even as his mind screamed.
Solaire stepped closer, boots ringing softly against stone. The sun caught on the curve of his pauldrons and made them gleam.
"I am Solaire of Astora," he announced brightly, and even in a strange land he carried the same earnest cadence, like introducing yourself was a kind of sacred ritual. "An adherent of the Lord of Sunlight!"
He turned toward John, friendly and open, as if meeting him was the most natural thing in the world.
"And you, good fellow! I did not notice you at first." His helm dipped in a polite little bow. "May I have your name?"
John's throat tried to close on him.
He swallowed it down.
"Johnathan." He said, and to his own surprise his voice came out steady. "Just… Johnathan."
Solaire looked at the offered hand for a second, as if the concept of a handshake was either new to him or simply not the first greeting ritual he'd expected, but then he gave a delighted little hum and clasped John's hand firmly.
His grip was warm, strong and honest. Not the slippery, performative grip of a liar.
It didn't feel like Patches.
But that did not help his sanity.
"…Likewise!" Solaire declared, giving the handshake a single enthusiastic pump before releasing it with a flourish like he'd just sealed a pact. "A pleasure! A pleasure indeed!"
Millicent leaned in slightly toward Melina, whispering with theatrical subtlety. "He talks like he's in a play."
Melina murmured back, deadpan. "Perhaps he is. Perhaps we all are."
Rogier, for his part, was watching Solaire with the expression of a scholar who had just found a book that should not exist in his library. He looked fascinated and wary in equal measure, like he was already composing ten different theories in his head.
Solaire, oblivious to being analyzed by three different people at once, clasped his hands together.
"What fortune!" he said. "To find fellow souls wandering this grim stronghold. I confess, when I first arrived in these lands, I feared I would be greeted only by hollow-eyed wretches and the lash of hostile steel!"
Millicent blinked. "First arrived?"
Solaire nodded eagerly. "Indeed! Not long ago, I heard tell of mighty rulers and Demigods who shaped this realm by war and miracle. It stirred something within me, an old itch, you might say."
He laughed. "So I resolved to see these so-called great ones with mine own eyes. To know whether they are truly worthy of the measure their names carry."
John's lips twitched faintly.
"That's…" He started, then decided honesty was probably easiest. "That's basically why we're here too."
Solaire's helm tilted. "Oh?"
Melina stepped forward before John could accidentally say something too blunt like we're here to assassinate a handsy demigod with a grafting fetish.
"We seek audience with the Demigod who rules this castle. Godrick the Grafted." Melina said smoothly, voice calm and controlled.
Millicent, being Millicent, immediately added on. "Also we might kill him."
Melina shot her a look.
Millicent shrugged, unapologetic. "What? It's true."
Solaire did not look offended. If anything, he looked intrigued.
"Godrick…" He repeated, as if tasting the name. "A Demigod, yes? I have heard of him. Cruelty. Grafting. A hunger for strength that is… not unlike certain creatures I have met before."
Rogier's brows rose slightly at that, but he remained silent, letting the conversation unfold.
John rubbed the back of his neck, he figured Solaire was referring to the Demons of Lordran. "Yeah. That's him. We're… dealing with him."
Solaire's shoulders lifted in a pleased little sigh.
"How marvellous~!" He sighed, and when Melina stiffened at the word choice, he hurriedly clarified. "Not that suffering is marvellous! No, no, of course not. But the meeting of paths, the crossing of fates- ah! It is splendid when one is not entirely alone beneath the sky, is it not?"
Millicent's expression softened despite herself. Even she couldn't fully resist that kind of earnestness.
Melina, however, remained cautious. "And you. Why are you here, Sir Solaire of Astora?"
Solaire's entire posture straightened as if she had asked him something sacred.
He placed his fist to his chest again, and when he spoke, his voice warmed with reverence. "I am here as an adherent of the Lord of Sunlight. I have come to find my own Sun."
The wind seemed to pause just long enough for that sentence to settle.
Millicent's face scrunched. "Your own… Sun."
Melina seemed poised to ask the obvious follow-up: "What do you mean, your own sun?" But she paused, gaze sliding toward Rogier as if deciding the conversation had already picked up enough strange threads for one moment.
Rogier, of course, took that pause like an invitation.
He raised both hands in a mild, almost comedic surrender, shoulders lifting, and John could practically see the dramatic sweatdrop hanging over his head even though none existed.
"I fear my reason for being here is far less… dramatic than Sir Solaire's." Rogier said with a rueful smile as a comical drop of sweat fell down his face.
Millicent grinned immediately. "Oh? C'mon. Say it. Give us the nerd reason."
Rogier's smile tightened. "It is not-"
"Nerd reason!" Millicent insisted, leaning forward.
Melina sighed, but the corner of her mouth twitched like she was fighting a smile. "Millicent."
Millicent held up both hands in mock innocence. "What? I'm curious."
Rogier gave a long-suffering exhale.
"Very well." He glanced toward the castle interior, eyes narrowing. "I came to satisfy a curiosity that has troubled me for some time."
John's brows rose. "What kind of curiosity brings you into Stormveil of all places?"
Rogier hesitated. Then, after a moment of clear reluctance, he said it.
"The tell-tales of Deathroot spreading its influence here." He admitted, voice lowering. "Roots and growths that do not belong. Whispers of… something foul beneath Stormveil's stones."
Millicent's grin faded, replaced by a wary frown. Melina's posture stiffened slightly, hand drifting closer to the dagger at her hip.
John's expression went flat.
"Oh…"
Rogier noticed that shift immediately.
"I take it that it is not merely a rumor to you." He said carefully.
John didn't even try to joke.
"Rogier…" He said, voice low and firm. "...if you still want to live, never approach Deathroot. Not with curiosity, or confidence, and not even with 'just a quick look.' There are no comebacks, and there is no cure to it. At least no cure that I'd like."
Solaire's helm tilted, the bright sun on his chest catching the light as if it approved of the question.
"Deathroot…?" He repeated, the word unfamiliar in his mouth. "And you speak of it as if it is a certainty of demise. What do you mean by no comebacks?"
John met his gaze, and whatever humor he'd been carrying a moment ago bled out of him.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't dramatize it. He simply spoke with the kind of grim certainty that only came from someone who had already stared at the thing in question and felt his stomach turn.
"We're not immortal." He said flatly. "Not like that. Not really. And Deathroot, as the name implies… makes damn sure you stay dead."
Solaire went very still as he processed that for a moment.
"…Ah." He then said, softly.
Then, after a beat, his voice warmed again, but there was an edge to it now. An earnest seriousness that made the air feel slightly heavier.
"That is… strange… In the land from which I hail, Lordran, humanity is… well…" He hesitated, as if searching for the least alarming way to phrase something profoundly alarming.
"…We are filled with what you might call… the undead."
Millicent blinked.
Rogier's brows climbed so high they nearly disappeared into his fringe.
"Undead?" He echoed, like the word itself was a spell he wanted to dissect. The only 'undead' this land knew of were Those Who Live In Death.
Melina's posture tightened by a fraction, her eye narrowing with immediate suspicion and immediate fascination in equal measure. "You mean… you have returned from death?"
Solaire nodded, almost apologetically, as if he feared they'd think him mad.
"Aye. Time and time again."
A silence fell across the rampart that had nothing to do with the wind.
John didn't speak. He forced his expression to remain neutral. Even while inside his mind something clicked into place with a private, almost dizzying certainty.
'…So it really is him.'
His gut wanted to lurch with it. His brain wanted to spin off into a dozen questions at once. But he swallowed all of it down and let the others react first, because if he so much as breathed wrong, Melina would stare at him like she'd just caught him cheating on reality.
Millicent finally found her voice again. "Okay, wait, so you're telling me everyone in your world is just… immortal?"
Rogier's tone came careful and scholarly, but it couldn't hide the awe crawling under it.
"This mirrors the Grace granted by Queen Marika…" He murmured, almost to himself. "The Tarnished rising again and again… Yet you speak as if it is not selective. Not bound by favor or divine will."
Solaire nodded. "It is… widespread. Or rather, it became so. Like a sickness and a blessing at once."
Melina's gaze flicked to John instinctively, as if checking whether his face held any sign of deception, but John only held still and let her look. He could practically feel Marika in the background of his mind. She was quietly listening, the faint pressure of her attention like a hand resting on the back of his neck.
Solaire continued, voice earnest, his words rolling out with the cadence of someone repeating what he'd been taught in prayers and campfire conversations and half-mad sermons shouted by hollow men at the edge of ruins.
"It is only to an extent." He clarified, raising one hand in a gentle, explanatory motion. "Our Lord of Sunlight, Gwyn, harbors the First Flame of creation. Through it, his reign is undying."
His head dipped slightly, reverent without being blind. "So long as that Flame burns, the body may fall and rise and fall and rise again."
Millicent swallowed. "Woah..."
Rogier looked like someone had handed him a living thesis. "The First Flame… A primal source of creation…"
Melina's eye narrowed, more guarded now.
"And yet you said 'only to an extent'." She pressed. "What limits such immortality?"
Solaire's voice softened, and for the first time since he'd turned to face them, his cheer dimmed like the sun passing behind clouds.
"…The mind." He said simply.
He placed a hand to his chest, fingers splayed over the sun sigil as if anchoring himself there.
"While the body may remain, the mind is still vulnerable. A man may yet… truly die… if he allows himself to give up." His helm angled toward them, earnest and almost pleading. "That is why one mustn't dare go Hollow."
The words landed like a stone dropped into a still lake.
Millicent's grin faltered slightly.
Rogier stared, then slowly exhaled as he processed the tale of a distant people. "So despair is the true death. Not the blade, or the fall…"
Melina didn't speak for several seconds. When she finally did, her voice was quiet and measured.
"To live forever, but to lose oneself…" She swallowed. "That is not mercy."
Solaire's posture straightened a little, as if grateful someone understood the weight of it without laughing.
John said nothing out loud. He only listened, face carefully composed.
Inside his head, he felt Marika shift. It was faint and subtle, like the goddess had leaned closer to catch the shape of that concept.
Then he glanced inward, prodding gently at the goddess who had been quiet ever since she'd vanished beneath Stormveil.
'Well?' He thought. 'Thoughts?'
There was a pause. Then, Marika's presence brushed him with a cool, restrained hum that was equal parts wary and intrigued.
"I find it… distasteful." She replied in his mind, her voice controlled. It was almost flat in a way, like she was controlling her every syllable carefully.
John kept his face still.
The others, however, were still processing, and the conversation drifted naturally into that messy zone where disbelief wrestled with the plain sincerity of the man speaking.
Millicent crossed her arms. "So you guys just… keep coming back until you don't."
Solaire nodded once. "Until you lose the will to return, until what returns is not you, but a Hollow."
Rogier's gaze sharpened. "And your Lord of Sunlight, this Gwyn, he maintains this Flame?"
Solaire's voice warmed a fraction again, as if talking about Gwyn was easier than talking about Hollowing. "Aye, he is… the measure by which many of us once understood the world."
Melina's gaze flicked sideways, thoughtful, and then she spoke, almost as if the words had been tugging at her tongue for a while.
"…I remember…" She said slowly. "Johnathan saying something similar before."
John's pulse ticked upward.
Millicent's eyes slid to him instantly, sharp. "Huh?"
Melina continued, unhurried. "Don't you dare go Hollow."
Her eye narrowed slightly at John, not accusing, but observant. "You said it many times. To Siegmeyer… and to that Bloody Finger Hunter. Yura, I believe."
John's stomach did a small, unpleasant flip.
Solaire, however, didn't react like this was some grand reveal.
He simply made an offhand sound of recognition, like someone hearing a familiar name in a market.
"Ah, yes!" He said easily. "I know this Yura."
Millicent's mouth fell open. "Huh? For real?"
Melina's eye sharpened to a bright point. "You met him?"
Solaire nodded, utterly unbothered by how impossible that should have sounded.
"Not long after arriving he helped me become acquainted with these lands. A stern fellow, but honest. He spoke often of hunters and blood and caution." His voice brightened. "He also warned me, quite firmly, not to underestimate the dangers of this realm. A sensible man."
John felt sweat threaten at the back of his neck as inside, his mind sprinted. 'Okay. Okay. Thank you, Solaire. Thank you, Yura. You beautiful idiots. You've given me exactly one moment to not look like I'm about to combust.'
Outwardly, John only exhaled, slow and controlled, and let his shoulders lift in a small, natural shrug.
"Yeah…" He said carefully, trying to keep his voice casual. "That phrase… it just felt natural to me."
Melina watched him closely.
John didn't look away.
"Even when I woke up a few days ago with basically no memories, I still vaguely remembered… some things." He continued, tone steady. "Not any names or places, but… instincts. And that phrase was ingrained in my mind."
He tapped the side of his head lightly, as if the words had been carved there. "I think… at least instinctually… I knew to never let myself forget it."
Millicent's suspicion softened into something more thoughtful. Still sharp, but not hostile.
Melina's gaze held for a beat longer, then she gave a small, slow nod, as if accepting it as the best explanation she was going to get.
Solaire, meanwhile, perked up like he'd just been handed a shared secret.
"Oh!" he said, delighted. "Then you and I share something!"
Millicent squinted. "Share what?"
Solaire rubbed the back of his head, a bashful gesture that somehow looked ridiculous and charming even through gauntlets and plates.
"The process of arriving here…" He said, voice dropping slightly. "It was… arduous. To say the least."
John straightened.
All the noise in his head, the disbelief, the shock, the curiosity had immediately aligned into a single spear-point of attention.
Because that was the real question, wasn't it?
How did a man from Lordran end up here?
How did a sun-worshipping knight from another world stand on a rampart in Stormveil like he'd always belonged?
John's expression sharpened before he could stop it, and judging by the way Millicent leaned in and Rogier's eyes gleamed, he wasn't the only one.
Melina's voice was quiet but direct. "What do you mean?"
Solaire saw their sudden seriousness and chuckled again, as if he found their intensity endearing.
"Unfortunately…" He admitted with a little sigh. "I am not one hundred percent certain of how I arrived. My memories of the journey itself are rather…"
He hesitated, searching for the word, then finished with a sheepish little tilt of his helm. "…fuzzy, to say the least."
Millicent groaned. "Of course they are."
Rogier looked both disappointed and thrilled, at least on an academic basis.
"Fuzzy." he repeated, as if already planning to ask seventeen follow-up questions.
Melina's eye narrowed. "Convenient..."
John kept his face neutral, but inside his mind a different kind of movement happened.
Marika finally appeared at the corner of his vision.
She stepped into the edge of his awareness on purpose, her spectral gold faint against the daylight. And curiously enough, she seemed to be intentionally avoiding looking at him directly, gaze turned slightly off as if she were studying the horizon or the stonework or anything that wasn't him.
John didn't catch it as his focus was still snagged on Solaire's existence like a hook in his ribs. But he made sure to flash her his signature annoyingly warm smirk and a teasing wink.
Marika, of course, noticed that.
And rather than say anything that sounded like vulnerability, she did what Marika always did when she was cornered by softness.
She deflected.
"...What?" She drawled in his mind, voice edged with practiced disdain. "Thou missest me that much already, dost thou? Could not bear even a short silence?"
John's lips twitched.
He kept his expression steady for the others, but inside his skull he smirked.
'Is it that time of the month again?' He shot back innocently.
Marika scoffed so hard he could practically hear it echo.
"Gods do not get period cramps."
John had to do everything in his power to not burst out laughing.
Solaire didn't seem to notice the strange little storm of private laughter John was choking down behind his teeth. If anything, the sun-knight looked encouraged by the fact they were still listening to him at all, helmet angled slightly as if he could feel their curiosity like warmth.
He clapped his hands together once and spoke as though he were recounting a fond pilgrimage.
"Very well!" He said, cheer returning to his voice as if he could simply choose it into existence. "I shall tell you what I remember. Though I warn you, my tale is… patchy. Like a tapestry chewed by a particularly rude dog."
Millicent snorted. Rogier leaned forward. Melina's eye stayed fixed on Solaire like she was trying to decide whether to trust him or dissect him.
Solaire drew a breath and began.
"I recall journeying for days and nights back to back," he said, and for a moment his tone lost its brightness, becoming tired and measured. "Not resting as I ought. Not eating as I ought. Only walking, and walking, and walking… because something in me insisted I must continue."
His gauntlet lifted and made a vague motion forward, as though indicating a road that existed only in his mind.
"I believe it took more than a fortnight." He added, almost sheepish, as if admitting weakness. "Though it is difficult to measure time when one's only company is the sound of one's own steps."
"Two weeks?" Rogier's brows rose as he murmured under his breath, voice filled with half disbelief and half academic hunger.
Solaire nodded. "At the end of that path… if memory serves…" He paused, head tilting as if listening to a distant echo. "I think I reached a desolate land. Far from any kingdom I had ever known."
The cheerful cadence softened again. His words came slower now, dragging behind them the texture of remembered wind.
"There were no banners. No towers. No familiar roads. Just… hollow emptiness." He said quietly. "A place that felt as if it had been scraped clean. Towards the end, I believe I walked through hallowed ruins of a dead and buried land."
Melina's posture shifted, the smallest tightening in her shoulders. The Lands Between had few places like that.
Solaire continued, voice warming only slightly, like a man speaking near a fire he couldn't quite approach.
"Eventually, I found a path of nothing but sand and storm." He spread his arms a little. "A sea of sand, and above it a sky that did not seem to end despite the pouring rain it pelted at all. The wind there did not simply blow, it raged. It clawed at my armor, hissed through my joints, and filled my helm with grit until my mouth tasted like stone."
Millicent made a face. "Gross."
"And yet, there was… guidance."
He lifted one finger, as if marking a point of wonder.
"The only life the eye could see were luminous bugs lighting the path. Small, drifting things of pale gold. Like sparks that refused to die." His head dipped, reverent. "They hovered ahead of me in clusters, always just far enough away that I would have to follow to see them clearly… as if urging me onward."
Rogier's breath caught faintly. Melina's eye narrowed further.
John felt Marika's presence stir at the edge of his thoughts. She was alert now, attentive.
'Luminous bugs..?' John thought, the phrase catching on something in his memory like a hook snagging cloth.
Solaire's voice dipped again, and the air around the ramparts seemed to tighten with it.
"Then… I remember flashes." He said, and for the first time he sounded genuinely uncertain, like someone describing a dream they didn't trust. "An enormous howling vortex. One that seemed far larger than anything I had ever witnessed. Not a storm you watch from afar, this was a storm that felt like it was meant to swallow the world."
He held his hands apart, trying to indicate scale, and failed. The gesture collapsed into something small and helpless.
"It spun in the distance at first. A wound in the sky, perhaps. A mouth. A whirl that made the sand rise and dance as if the earth itself wished to be devoured."
Millicent's grin had fully faded now.
"A… vortex?" She echoed slowly.
Solaire nodded once. "My memories blur even further when I was consumed and fell within it. I only recall a flash of blinding pain before a muddy wave of nothingness overtook me. It was almost like drowning, but without water. As if I was crushed by existence itself."
Silence sat on the rampart for a few breaths after that.
Even the tied soldiers inside, muffled and resentful, seemed quieter as if the castle itself was trying to listen.
Then, in John's head, Marika spoke. Her voice was low and thoughtful, the earlier teasing replaced by something sharper.
"Sand and storm…" she murmured, and John could feel her mind turning over maps she had once held in her hands, borders she had once drawn in blood and oath. "That sounds akin to the Badlands that border the Lands Between. Or the harsh reaches beyond… places where nothing thrives save the stubborn."
She paused, displeased.
"But this vortex…" she continued, voice tightening with genuine uncertainty. "I have heard of no such thing. No storm-mouth. No sky-wound. Nothing in my reign, nor before it, that matches thy description."
John didn't answer her yet. His gaze stayed on Solaire, because the sun-knight was drawing breath again, as though he'd only been waiting for them to stop staring at him like he'd confessed to walking out of a myth.
Solaire rubbed the back of his head with that same bashful gesture, as if embarrassed his life refused to be normal.
"And then…" He said, brightening slightly. It seemed less because the tale became happier and more because he was relieved he could recall something clearly. "I awoke."
Melina's eye sharpened. "Where?"
Solaire hesitated, searching for language.
"It was a new place…" He said slowly. "A path of winding trees."
His voice became more descriptive, but still fuzzy at the edges, like he was trying to paint a picture with wet charcoal.
"The air was… damp. Not cold or warm. Just… heavy. As if it had been sitting there undisturbed for ages." He lifted his helm slightly, as if remembering the feel of that air against his face. "There were trees, yes, but they were… strange. Twisted. Winding. Like they grew in circles, refusing to commit to any direction."
Rogier's eyes gleamed, hungry. Melina's expression didn't change, but her attention sharpened so intensely it felt like a blade.
"There was a faint light, but no sun overhead that I can recall." Solaire continued. "The ground was soft, and there were little pools and rivulets cutting through it… and the fog- Ah, the fog was everywhere. It clung to my greaves and curled around my legs like it wanted to keep me."
"That sounds like a nightmare swamp." Millicent muttered.
Solaire chuckled lightly and nodded. "It did feel… unsettling. There were things there that looked like old carvings or statues half-sunk into the earth. Faces worn down. Shapes I could not name. It was as if something living was frozen in stone in an instant and forgotten that way."
He paused again, voice lowering. "And there were sounds… not of beasts, but of something watching."
Solaire went on, as if the memory was finally loosening.
"Soon after I awoke there and walked through it… I ran into a few old, kind ladies. Three of them. They sat together as if they had always been waiting. Their eyes were… odd." He fumbled for the description, then settled on honesty. "They did not seem blind, not truly. Merely distant. As though they looked through me rather than at me."
Melina's brow twitched. Rogier looked delighted. Millicent looked vaguely creeped out.
"They spoke gently." Solaire continued. "As if they had seen worse than me and found me… almost endearing." A little warmth returned to his tone. "They helped me get my bearings. Told me I was not the first to wander lost, and I would not be the last. Then they… sent me on my way once more."
John's mouth had gone dry.
Marika's presence brushed his mind again, uneasy. "Old women… seers, mayhaps? This sounds like the work of spirits. Or something older."
Solaire nodded faintly, as if he could feel the truth of that even now.
"Not long after that, I remember walking along a path of winding forest. The trees there were tighter, closer. The air less damp." He paused, then laughed a little under his breath in disbelief. "And then I closed my eyes for but a moment…"
His voice softened. The rampart wind seemed louder for a second.
"…and woke yet again."
Millicent looked flabbergasted. "You napped into a new world?"
Solaire chuckled, almost apologetic. "It feels absurd when I say it aloud, yes."
Melina's eye narrowed so hard it could have cut stone. "Where did you wake?"
Solaire lifted his head. His voice brightened just a fraction with the relief of having something solid to name.
"In these lands, blessedly." He sighed. "In a massive lake not too far from here. I remember the shock of cold water and mud." He tilted his helm, as if hearing it again. "And I remember… a thunderous roar."
"It was the sound of two dragons, I'm sure. They sounded like they were in battle as well." Solaire continued, oblivious to the implications. "The sound shook my bones. The sky above the lake flashed with fire and fury."
Millicent let out a low whistle. "Not the kindest thing to wake to."
"Two dragons…?" Rogier echoed, his voice sounding fascinated.
Melina's fingers curled slightly at her side.
"That must have been your battle." She said, turning to John. Her tone stayed calm, but there was a faint, honest edge of awe she didn't bother to hide. "At Agheel Lake. When Blaidd, Millicent and I stood with the remaining villagers and watched you… do whatever it was you thought you were doing."
Millicent snorted.
"He jumped on the damn thing." She butted in, eyes gleaming at the memory. "Climbed up its neck like a crazy person, froze its skull into an iceberg and rode it down onto that ruined bell tower. Right in front of what was left of the town."
She grinned, a little savage and more than a little proud. "Scared the piss out of the survivors. Had some of them cheering after, but still."
Melina's gaze stayed on John, softer but no less intent. "You did fell the beast in front of them all, avenging their fallen in the process. Brutally, might I add. I remember thinking the townsfolk would never see dragons as legends again after that. Only as things that bleed."
John felt his ears go a bit warm. Being complimented by one woman was one thing. Being tag-teamed by both with a live commentary of his greatest hits was… something else.
He shrugged, because anything else would be too much. "To be fair, he started it. I was just returning the favor."
Solaire turned his helm toward John, interest plain even through cold steel.
"So that spectacle was you!" He said, clearly delighted. "Magnificent! To grapple with a dragon so boldly- Ah, what a sight it must have been!"
"It was terrifying." Melina corrected mildly.
"But cool." Millicent added under her breath. "…And kinda hot."
John decided very firmly not to react to that.
Inside his head, Marika hummed once, the sound amused and edged.
"Thou art collecting admirers like trinkets, mine Champion." She observed dryly. "Pray thy head does not swell to match thy dragon."
He ignored her on purpose, which only made her amusement deepen.
They cycled through their reactions in varying flavors of disbelief and quiet pride until the conversation naturally swung back toward the stranger among them.
Rogier cleared his throat, ever the scholar, forcing his voice level.
"Regardless…" He said, gaze returning to Solaire. "Your tale of arrival… is fascinating, to say the least. Another world entirely, then a… vortex, and finally here."
Solaire chuckled helplessly. "I fear I do it little justice. Most of it is guesswork and fragments. I can only swear that I did not begin my journey in this land… and yet here I stand."
That was when Marika leaned in, metaphorically speaking.
John felt her presence sharpen, like a candle-flame focusing into a needlepoint. "Tell me, this lake of his awakening, didst thou feel aught unusual there when thou first fought? Any… wrongness? A sense of an opening?"
'Apart from the giant dragon trying to barbeque me?' John thought back. 'Not really. But if there was a hole in reality there, I was a bit busy being crispy. Besides, you were there too. Neither of us noticed anything.'
She clicked her tongue softly, dissatisfied, but fell silent for the moment.
He dragged himself back to the surface in time to notice everyone else still watching Solaire, puzzling over his patchwork tale.
'Still, though.' John thought, heart ticking a little faster as the pieces arranged themselves in his mind. 'Sand and storm, luminous bugs lighting the way, then some kind of world-eating vortex… Then waking in a foggy forest with weird old ladies…'
It all sounded wrong for the Lands Between.
And painfully right for somewhere else.
Dark Souls 2's opening cinematic flickered in the back of his skull like an old film reel. The fall through the whirlpool, that in-between place with the shriveled old Firekeepers cackling over destiny.
And after that, the peaceful expanse of Majula.
'A sandstorm crossroads. A vortex. An in-between full of weird old crones…' He thought, his wonder sharpening into something almost like a hypothesis. 'That sounds way too much like Things Betwixt.'
His fingers flexed unconsciously at his side.
'Could that be it?' John wondered, pulse beating loud in his ears. 'A real in-between. A road between worlds. Not just lore flavor… but an actual mechanism. A way people get dragged from one reality to another. But… it still sounds kind of off. Like we don't have every piece of the puzzle yet.'
Before John could press Rogier any further, or let his brain spiral about his Sunbro and all the multiversal nonsense they'd just learned of, the air split with a scream from afar.
It rose up from somewhere deeper in the castle, raw and choked, carried on the wind like a thread of sound pulled too tight. A young woman's voice, cracking on the edge of panic and pain.
All five of them went still.
Millicent's head snapped toward the source immediately. "What the hell was that?"
They all moved at once, gravitating toward the rampart's edge. Boots thudded over old stone, scraping against moss and grit as they came up to the crenellations and looked down at the belly of Stormveil.
The view from here was… comprehensive.
Below, the main inner courtyard sprawled out like a dissected beast. Ballistas squatted along the walls like hunched spiders, their wooden limbs creaking under the attention of sweating soldiers. Men in mismatched armour shifted crates, shouted orders, dragged chains. The ground was a patchwork of mud, scraped stone, and old blood that had sunk into the cracks.
And then a set of ironbound doors at the base of one of the inner keeps slammed open.
He emerged.
Godrick the Grafted waddled into view like someone had taken a nobleman, a gaping pit of madness, and a pile of corpses, then stirred until it curdled.
His body was a swollen parody of form. Limbs jutted from him in places no limb had any business being: extra arms grafted along his sides, some ending in hands, others tapering into half-formed knots of bone and muscle.
Flesh of countless people sewn and stapled together under patchwork golden plates that had lost the right to be called "armour" and were now just shackles for stolen meat. His main torso was encased in battered, gilded iron, emblazoned with a sigil that had once meant something. His shoulders were crowned in a mess of mangled limbs, trophies forced into permanence.
And despite it all, his head, his face, was the worst.
Pale, veiny skin covered a face like a melted candle that had gotten ideas above its station. His nose was thick, his cheeks drooped, and his eyes were small and wet and mean, peering out from beneath a circlet that seemed to sit on him like an accusation rather than a crown. Patchy hair clung to his scalp as if it regretted the association.
Every movement squelched faintly where flesh met flesh that did not belong to it.
Marika went very, very still in his head.
Then, slowly, he felt it: the shudder.
Her golden light trembled, reverberating with something that wasn't quite rage and wasn't quite horror but lived somewhere in the awful marriage of the two.
"By the Crucible…" She whispered, voice low and shaking.
"What… is that?!" Her words turned sharper, edged with a cold, trembling fury. "He dares call that… that abomination my bloodline? This is not grafting. This is not harmony. This is butchery of the lowest order. My people's gift, perverted into… into this…"
John's jaw clenched.
He'd seen Godrick before, in another life, as a boss health bar and a pile of polygons. It had been grotesque then, but there'd been distance, safety. Screen and controller and the knowledge that none of it was quite real.
Here, watching the way the stolen arms twitched independently, seeing the damp gleam along the stitches, smelling the faint tang of rot that rose even to this height. It turned his stomach in a way the game never could.
But something else seized his attention.
In one of Godrick's many hands, one of the main pair growing from his shoulders, he held a woman.
She was small compared to him, limbs tucked in by necessity more than choice. Purple hair hung in tangled strands around her face, matted with sweat and dust. Her clothes were ripped, one sleeve hanging half-free. Her eyes were squeezed shut, tears streaking down her cheeks as she kicked weakly at the air, struggling against the oversized fingers cinched around her waist.
She screamed again as Godrick's grip tightened.
John's vision narrowed.
His hearing, already sharp from his altered body, reached down into the courtyard like it had grown its own claws. The clatter of armour, the creak of ballista ropes, the murmur of distant conversation. All of it layered into a background hum he pushed aside as he focused.
…There.
Godrick's voice rose above the rest, wet and reedy, thick with self-important bile, speaking to a knight striding at his side in full grafted guard raiment.
"I shall be in my chambers." Godrick said, his tone almost sing-song, like he was discussing lunch. "I'll be busy for the rest of the day. I am not to be disturbed. Do you understand?"
The girl stiffened in his grip, eyes snapping open in horror. She thrashed harder, nails digging into the meat of his hand, but that only earned her a grunt of irritation.
One of his other arms, a smaller, half-formed one jutting from his ribs, snaked up with a grotesque quickness, wrapping around her throat. Fingers dug in, cutting off her protests. The sound of her struggle choked off into a wet gasp.
All around them, the courtyard soldiers looked away.
One man at a ballista winced, jaw clenching. Another knight shifted his stance, knuckles whitening on his spear. Someone swallowed audibly, but no one moved.
The knight Godrick had addressed kept his eyes on the Demigod's shoulder, resolutely unseeing the girl.
"As you command, my lord." The knight said, voice tight. "I will be sure of it."
Godrick's lips peeled back in something that might have been meant as a smile. On his face, it looked like a wound splitting.
"Excellent…" He chuckled, the sound bubbling in his throat. "A day to celebrate, is it not? That filthy Omen finally slinking away, no longer mucking up my courtyard and loitering outside my Castle. As if I, Godrick the Golden, should ever need protection from a lowly graceless creature like him!"
He snorted, the sound full of spite.
John's hands curled into fists on the stone.
Margit. Morgott. Was acting as a watchdog to protect this… thing?
Godrick's attention turned fully to the girl in his grasp.
He lifted her higher, grip shifting so his primary hand wrapped around her waist, a cluster of smaller arms bracing underneath like obscene supports. The strangling hand slid up, palm clamping over her mouth.
Her eyes went wide, breath coming in sharp, terrified hitches through her nose.
"It truly is a day to celebrate, would you not say, eh, Sakura?" Godrick crooned, one of his stolen hands breaking formation just long enough to trace a calloused thumb along her trembling chin.
She shivered hard enough her entire body shook. Tears welled faster, spilling over, running down onto his fingers.
John's vision went red at the edges.
He'd already heard enough.
He pushed himself up from the crenellation so fast his knee scraped stone, and his hand snapped to the side, fingers hooking into empty air.
The Commander's Standard dropped into his grasp with a solid, almost eager weight.
The sudden motion made the others jolt.
Millicent half reached for her sword on instinct. Rogier flinched, one hand flying inside his coat where he kept his catalyst. Solaire's helm cocked, the sun on his chest catching the light as he shifted his stance. Melina simply straightened, cloak whispering against stone as she narrowed her eye.
"What are you doing?" Melina asked sharply. "Johnathan."
Rogier's brows knitted. "You heard something, didn't you? We can't from here. The wind-"
Millicent squinted at his face, reading the way his jaw clenched and unclenched. "Yeah, what's got you looking like you're about to murder a god?"
John tore his eyes away from the courtyard long enough to look at them.
His pupils were thin slits, more dragon than man for a heartbeat.
"It's fucking obvious what he's about to do to that woman." He said, voice low and edged.
He pointed toward the struggling blur that was Sakura. Even from this height, you could see the way she squirmed against his grip, the way one leg kicked uselessly.
"And I won't allow it."
Melina's lips pressed into a thin line, her gaze returned to the courtyard as she crossed her arms, fingers tense.
"John…" She said quietly. "...he is surrounded by his men. Ballistas. Archers. Knights. To jump in now is to throw yourself into a noose. This is not a duel in a secluded field. It is suicide to attack him here, like this."
Rogier nodded quickly, relief flickering in his eyes that someone else had said it first.
"I… must agree. I feel for the girl, truly, but I have grown rather attached to my limbs, and I would prefer they remain ungrafted and in their original configuration."
The word grafted made John's teeth grind.
He almost growled, a low sound starting in his chest before he strangled it.
"...I don't plan to be some mindless Hero of Justice. I'm not throwing my life away on a stupid, noble impulse or a blind ideal."
He jerked the Commander's Standard up, the banner fluttering in the wind like a blood-red tongue.
"But I'm not going to sit here and watch someone get violated just to make my own life more convenient!" He continued, voice rising as he spoke.
Millicent's mouth curved into something that was half-smirk, half-grimace a moment later. "Well… When you put it like that…"
She stepped forward, drawing her sword with a bright ring of steel. "I was getting bored anyway."
Solaire's helm turned toward John.
He had no eyes visible, no face, and yet John could feel the warmth of his smile.
"I cannot say I know any of you well yet, friend." Solaire said, voice bright with something fiercer than cheer. "But my own ideals do not permit me to stand idle while such cruelty unfolds. A knight's duty is to those who cannot fight for themselves."
He thumped a fist to his chest. "If you would charge into hell to save that young woman, good sir, then allow me to accompany you. We shall make of it a most… joyous Cooperation!"
Rogier made a tiny choking noise. "He says 'Cooperation' and I hear 'mutually assured dismemberment'…"
Marika, silent through the last few moments, stirred.
"Thou art an idiot." She murmured in his head, tone straining somewhere between exasperation and something softer. "A reckless, dragon-brained imbecile."
He could feel it though. She was bracing herself alongside his resolve, not stepping back.
"...But I have endured enough centuries of doing nothing, go." She finished quietly.
John's grip tightened on the Commander's Standard.
Something in the weapon seemed to respond to the mana that leaked into its metal.
Crimson light bled slowly from the banner's tattered edges, uncoiling like smoke made of courage. It washed over his hands first, then seeped outward, a ripple of energy that rolled over Millicent, Melina, Rogier, and Solaire in turn.
They all stiffened as the buff took hold.
Millicent's eyes widened. "Whoa-"
Heat flared in her veins, not burning but bright. Her muscles thrummed, her breath came easier, her heartbeat steadied into a battle rhythm she hadn't consciously chosen.
Rogier gasped softly, the trace of fear in his expression smoothed by an unexpected steadiness. The magic in him, usually kept carefully corralled, rose to the surface like a tide answering a distant moon.
Melina's cloak fluttered as the energy brushed past her; her eye narrowed, surprised by the way it made her heart beat faster.
Solaire threw his arms out wide, laughing.
"Ahhh!" He exulted. "Do you feel it?! The warmth! The vigor! Truly, your banner is touched by some radiant grace, friend! It is like sunlight in cloth!"
"Close enough…" John muttered as he ran.
He vaulted up onto the nearest stretch of rampart, boots pounding. Millicent matched his pace instantly, feet light, sword in hand. Solaire crashed along behind them, heavier but steady, his Sunlight Straight Sword and Shield coming free of their strap with a smooth motion.
Behind, Rogier and Melina shared a single, eloquent look.
Rogier shrugged, resignation and a hint of excitement mingling in his eyes.
"Well, if we die, at least it will make a fascinating story. For someone else."
Melina sighed, the sound equal parts long-suffering and unwillingly fond. "You are all insufferable, you know that?"
They leaped from rampart to rampart, closing the distance to the inner courtyard with reckless, desperate efficiency. The world blurred into a series of stone ledges and gaps; John's body moved on instinct and memory, that game-born knowledge of Stormveil's layout now married to very real consequences.
They cut across a sloping rooftop, shingles slipping underfoot. Millicent laughed breathlessly as she skidded and caught herself on a jutting stone gargoyle. Solaire simply stomped through, heavy and unwavering as a boulder.
Below, Godrick lumbered further into the courtyard, Sakura still trapped in his grasp, the knight at his side already peeling away to relay his orders. They were almost at the midway point, the exact center where ballistas had the best angle, where the open space gave no cover.
John reached the last rooftop.
He could feel his heart slamming against his ribs, could feel Marika's tension like a fist in his skull, could hear Godrick's ugly chuckle rising up between the clatter of armour.
He bared his teeth.
"Flame, Grant me Strength." He growled, slamming a fist against his chest before downing his Flask of Wondrous Physick.
The power ripped from him on a surge of heat.
Scarlet energy roared through his veins, blooming across his skin in a flare of magma-red sigils. Fire crawled up his arms, stacking atop the Commander's Standard's buff until he felt almost too full, like his body was a vessel barely holding back a storm.
His forearms bulged.
Scales spilled across his skin in a rush, black and dark-red, overlapping with a satisfying, familiar weight. His fingers elongated, bones rearranging with a wet, cracking series of pops that no longer hurt the way they once had; claws erupted from his nail-beds, curved and wicked, born to tear.
When he hit the edge of the roof, he didn't even hesitate as he jumped off with all his strength.
The world fell away beneath him.
Wind punched at his face as he dropped, banner streaming behind him like a crimson comet-tail. Time seemed to slow, stretching the seconds out into long, suspended heartbeats. He saw the courtyard spread below in perfect, terrible clarity: soldiers looking up, mouths opening in shouts; ballista crews turning, scrambling; Sakura's wide, terrified eyes locked on the sky; Godrick's head tilting back, crown glinting.
The Demigod's entire grotesque body tensed.
He sensed it.
He saw the streak of red and gold falling toward him, and his many hands clenched reflexively around what they held.
But he was simply too slow.
John's draconic arms burned with power as he brought the Commander's Standard down in both hands, every buff, every rune, every scrap of rage and disgust and stubborn, stupid heroism channeled into that single, descending strike.
The halberd's blade howled through the air.
It hit the thick wrist of the main arm holding Sakura like divine judgment.
For one stunning, visceral moment, there was resistance as he heard bone and stolen muscle and tendons that had no business being knit together screaming in protest.
Then they parted as the arm severed in a spray of gold-tinged blood and clotted graft-tissue, the cut so clean and so brutal it idly reminded John of execution footage he wished he'd never seen.
Godrick screamed.
A raw, bubbling howl tore out of him as the severed limb tumbled away, Sakura still clutched in its dead reflex. She dropped with it, hitting the ground hard as the severed hand's grip slackened and rolled, dumping her onto her side.
She lay there, gasping, one hand flying to her throat, eyes blown wide with shock and incredulous, shivering relief.
The rest of Godrick's stolen arms spasmed uselessly, their coordination shattered by pain. Hands loosened. For the first time in a long time, perhaps even centuries, something precious had been ripped from him, and his body didn't know how to respond.
John hit the ground between them.
The impact cracked the flagstones, a spiderweb of fractures racing out from beneath his boots. The shock ran up his legs, into his spine; he rode it, knees bending, claws gouging tiny crescents into the stone to keep his balance.
He straightened slowly, the Commander's Standard still held at an angle from the finished strike, its blade dripping with something that sizzled when it hit the ground.
Godrick clutched at his stump, a dozen other arms scrabbling to press over the wound. Golden-green blood oozed between his fingers, thick and ugly. His watery eyes latched onto John, filling with an immediate, burning hatred that wiped away the smugness in an instant.
He looked… smaller, suddenly.
For the first time in thousands of years, someone had reached out and taken something from him the way he'd stolen from others.
John spat once at the ground beside him, spattering the broken stone with saliva and ash.
He rolled his shoulders, letting the halberd come up and settle, its tip lifting until it levelled with Godrick's face. His smile stretched into something sharp and eager, all that earlier revulsion distilled into a single, focused line.
"Since you can't keep your hands to yourself…" He said, voice carrying clearly across the stunned courtyard. "I'll take them from you."
His grip tightened, banners snapping once in the courtyard wind.
"Piece by piece, I'll return you to the craven filth you tried to hide with stolen flesh."
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Author's Note:
POWER. STONES.
Godrick, amirite chat? The Incoming fight should be very cool, if i say so myself.
And hopefully the threads I laid out about Solaire and the parallel worlds tantalises your mind, if only a little~
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Next Chapter Title: May the Sun Shine Upon This Lord of Cinder!
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