BASKETBALL FIC: Diana Taurasi/Sue Bird [Dark Souls AU]
Title: Swing Sweet Charity, Take What's Left of Me
Cast: Diana Taurasi/Sue Bird
Summary: In the land of Lordran, there is no such thing as death. There's only walking or waking again, and whether or not you remember why you bother to do either.
Notes: Originally started as a birthday gift for thebasseffect, who encouraged me to take my time until I liked it instead of being timely. I'm super grateful, because I think it turned out pretty good -- which is largely due to her serving as a consistently helpful beta. Thanks to vicki595 as well for declaring it good enough to post.
Set in the universe of the video game Dark Souls, it's about a world where everyone dies, over and over, until they go insane.
As you can imagine, it's super upbeat! Close to 5,000 words. I know this isn't the fic you'd really expect post-Olympics, but I promise other things are coming (soon).
Swing sweet charity, take what's left of me;
a new beginning, or is this the end?
Swing sweet Seraphim, take me back again;
or watch me make the messes of men.
*
At first she is reluctant to call upon others for help. It seems ill-fitting that the chosen one who will bring an end to the rule of the flame and serve as salvation for all humanity should require the help of mere strangers in overcoming even the earliest obstacles on her journey.
Help is a concept she has never been truly intimate with, but it is not the only word she has forgotten how to say aloud. Her voice has gone raw except for grunts and moaning, the whispered hiss of pain and the rattle of a death cry before waking up to start all over again.
There are so few chances to speak to another soul -- one that will hear and understand. Most of her undead brothers and sisters have moved beyond the point of reason and comprehension, though sometimes she thinks that theirs is a language she knows far better. The rattle of sword and the sweet slick sound of leather sliding against stone are like toddlers talking, patterned and repeating, like coming home again.
She shuffles her feet, moving in time with her opponent. This is a dialogue between the two of them, but only one will like where it ends. She parries and thrusts, sliding her axe upward past the jut of his hip into the cavity of his chest. They press against each other, struggle briefly, and when his rotting mouth lets out a sigh against her cheek, she can't help but smile.
This kind of conversation, she understands, and knows how to finish.
But in those rare times passing a traveler on the road, she often only smiles tersely, afraid to open her mouth only to discover that the words have finally left after all.
*
Diana. My name is Diana.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself, just to keep your sanity. The mind is all you have left when both dignity and good health have been stripped away.
Lordran is a dark and craggy place, with more mountains than trees. The sun shines brightly when the clouds drift apart, but the wind blows cold when you're caught out in a barren turn upon a cliff.
It is not the land of her birth but it will be her home from now until the end of time. This is the contract of the Darksign and it is binding. Not even death can sever this connection. There is no end in a place without beginning or even middle. Time is inconsequential here, without any order or sequence. Any one moment is all moments at once and it will always be this way. Perhaps it always has been and the dead have always gathered here, trapped inside an endless cycle of violent glory and waste.
She thinks in terms like "they," "their," and "we" because it's a small comfort. Sometimes she even thinks that she can see them, gathering close to the flames. Diana reaches out to warm her hands and for just a moment her eyes catch a glimmer of another person through the screen of smoke and ash. My name is Diana. I come from the swamps.
*
Sometimes the chosen one wonders if the others, whoever they may be, are all just the same as she is. Have they also been told that they are here to replace Lord Gwyn and kindle the flame? Do they believe the Kingseeker's slow and steady proclamations without question or do they hesitate as she does?
It is simply not in the nature of a pyromancer to believe everything she is told.
They are peoples of the swamp land because they are unwanted anywhere else. It is their home, the only one that will not turn them away. Others fear the fire, the temptation and power it offers, and its eternal link with the undead. But to the peoples of the swamp, it is like an old friend. She cups a flame inside her palm, feeling its light tickle against her skin.
She holds her hand out above a pile of rust and ash at the base of a blood-stained sword and flames leap up to meet her touch. She wonders if the others might draw back from fear even as she herself pushes fingertips closer to the fire.
And there she is again: the girl with the piercing eyes. Unlike the other shadow figures gathering near, she sits especially close to the bonfire's glow. So unafraid of the heat is she that Diana thinks she might be pyromancer too, though she wears the robes of a sorcerer of the Vinheim Dragon College. It could be she looted it from a corpse.
Just the thought of it makes the center of Diana's right hand ache from remembering the feel of bone crunching under steel and the teeth-rattling shudder when her axe catches briefly between two ribs. In such cases, you must twist your hands and pivot your hips, wrenching the weapon back and then swiping again to the head.
Always aim for the head, or else between the shoulder blades.
Diana smiles to herself and sees the girl still there, looking at her across the fire. Not at her, of course, but at the darkness behind, beneath, around and inside them all and for just a moment she thinks she can see her starting to smile too.
*
The Kingseeker's smile is great and fearsome. His teeth are as long as Diana's arm is from wrist to elbow and when he pulls his lips back in a grin she can feel the air that rushes out striking up against her chest like a fist. When he speaks there is a sound like bones being ground to dust under the slow turning of a wheel.
"Many have gone before you," he says. "But none have returned."
Diana returns his smile with one of her own, accompanied by a small grimace. "That's not how it works here." A part of her thinks that it can't be wise to argue with someone whose eyes are larger than your head, yet she can't help but laugh, saying, "We all come back. The bonfires won't let us do otherwise."
The Primordial Serpent turns his head from side to side and the heavy jowls that hang from his cheeks make the wind stir all around them. Diana shifts her weight, feeling a slight pressure, but maintains her stance.
"Fate has chosen you, but proceed with caution," he warns, still speaking slowly. "If you turn Hollow, you shall not return."
This is all it takes to make her quiet and humbled. It isn't death she fears, but the waking again. Even now, she still shivers to feel the heat of the fire when she opens her eyes. She stands slowly, newly reformed muscles flexing, and reaches back into her own thoughts to try and touch… something. Some single part of her that remains. Does sanity have a feeling? Can you touch it with your own mind's eye and see the rounded corners of your way of thinking?
The corruption that comes from dying here is not only of the flesh, but of the mind. Hollowing is a spiritual sickness, to be sure, taken root inside one's own head. My name is Diana, she recites again. I am fighting for all of us.
More and more often, she wakes up not remembering how she came to be here. It may seem a mercy at first, but it frightens her. These mistakes are meant to prepare for what lies ahead. Learn from every error and every blade shoved through your back. This is the bonfire's blessing and its curse.
The first time she forgot the feeling of dying, it was almost a relief. It was pleasing somehow to open her eyes and feel nothing at all. None of that moment of panic -- the very human instinct that lives inside that memory of dying.
That faint and flickering impulse to run even though your nerves have ceased to function isn't there, screaming inside her head, when she smiles at the flames and tries to remember how she got to be here. The quest itself she recalls, it's always on her mind, but not the setback that has her seated here now.
It seemed a blessing the first time, but it all came rushing back again the next time she lay bleeding on the cold stone floor, a black knight rising up above her to deliver a crushing final blow that split through leather armor and straight down to her spine.
"Please," she whispered through dry, bloodless lips, but the knights of Gwyn are ever without mercy. He stood silent except for the low and rising whistle of steel cutting through the air. The roar of it grew louder, faster, closer. "Please," she said again, and as the blade rushed through to clang against the stones below, she smiled to herself to think, I haven't forgotten after all. I still know how to speak.
*
Diana didn't ask for this. No one does really and it's difficult to say where it comes from.
The branding of the Darksign only turns visible on your flesh once you're already dead, with no notice of when it was left. It's then that you come to the land of the undead and wait to go slowly mad.
That is the design and intent of the place. Its form and function is futility. Here is a pretty crypt for you to wander through, with a ceiling made of stars and the most lovely mountain views you could ask for.
It's easy to see the appeal of giving up, but that only comes with time. At first it all seems simple.
For humans, death is frightening. The finality of it could almost choke you, keep you from wanting to breath in at all, but here it's in the very air. She draws close to the water and the blue green mists rise up, taking form in swirling shapes and howling. These ghosts reach out with grasping claws for fingers, reaching for her heart. They wish to rip out her insides, what remains of what once might have been called human.
She was once human, after all.
The first time you pull the very humanity from inside a rotting corpse to feel it fluttering in your palm, it seems like something from a dream. It is still abstract and unreal, duty more than necessity.
Later, it becomes something more. She crushes the inky black substance against her palm, absorbing the tiny flame of true life left to the undead boy that's dissolving into nothingness at her feet. Diana feels herself growing whole, tattered flesh repairing itself and strength returning to her limbs. Even the sword hilt in her hand seems to vibrate with renewed energy.
When she swings the blade overhead, it whistles like the gathering of dark clouds or an army on a hillside. The end is drawing closer, whatever it may be.
*
The life that came before this one remains to her as something even less than memory. It is only a shadow of the past, a sense of something long since lost. Some day, she thinks, all that happens to me now will be the same way, like so much ash on my clothes scattered in a sudden wind.
She imagines a new past for herself and thinks of it sometimes when taking her first steps away from the fire. She knows the distraction will almost certainly kill her and that death, though fleeting, is always painful. It seems worth it anyhow, to imagine a place that could be called a home. She thinks she knows that word even still, however foreign and distant the thought might be.
Home.
That girl is there, the one with the dark hair and even darker eyes. But here in this dream world of the past, the girl smiles so that it reaches all the way to her eyes, and the feeling lights up inside Diana's chest like the burning of her bonfire. The girls' eyes are bright but also deep. They are almost infinite, but their time together is not.
Maybe it's a skeleton's sword that splits through her ribs, coming in at the shoulder and out near her lungs, or maybe it's an arrow straight through her thigh. It could be a war hammer the size of a giant's fist or flames from a dragon roasting her inside her own armor like a pig across a spit. Whatever does it, the dream will fade as Diana coughs a little more of what remains of her mortal life's essence out to smear the floor along with flecks of her own blood.
Her knee is bent the wrong way and the pain radiates out from the wound to her shoulder in waves. Just as the sword slips from her numb fingers, she can see the girl smiling to her from across their dream world.
"Diana," she says, because in this dream they are almost as one and so of course this girl would know her name.
My name is Diana. I come from the swamps.
*
They cannot speak to each other through this veil, but what words exist that are sufficient for the woman that lives inside your dreams.
The veil is no substantial thing. It cannot be touched or even truly seen. Instead it is sensed in the air and in whispers of movement and sound. Sometimes she could almost feel her heart beating against its pressure, like a hand squeezing inside her chest. The drumming of her heart, if it can still be called one, increases.
Like Diana herself, the rotting organ is only going through the motions -- like a person stumbling toward a memory at the back of your mind, long since started to fade. Retrace your last known steps to find where you left that essential missing piece.
She can see the stain her own blood left on the ground, darkening against the cold stones. Not too long ago, her corpse lay here, fading into dust. Diana crouches low and touches her fingertips to the ground. It's cool and slick against her fingers, which come away an angry dark red.
So this is real then, and not just another dream. It's growing harder to tell the two apart. She closes her eyes and the world is angry and dark, red with hate and fire and blood. She opens her eyes and the girl is standing there, hand reaching out to join fingers together, palms pressed close and hand to hand.
*
There's a soft sound in the air like bells, or maybe it's only a memory. They rang here once not so long ago.
Though time is different now.
What matters the passing of an hour, day, or even a year when there is nothing left to her that ages? It is not for her to grow old, but to simply fade away. Instead of a constant progression, she is living inside a countdown where she cannot see the clock.
The voice that echoes in the air is quiet and low, speaking in some language she does not know. Perhaps she never knew it.
Yes, Diana thinks, to reassure herself. This is not my native tongue. And then, just to prove to herself that she still knows how, she says it once aloud. "Yes."
The tinkling sound grows suddenly quiet and the long and delicate limbs that stretch out to occupy almost the whole of this cave grow still. There in their center is the source of the noise -- a creature that is half spider and half girl. She is weak and slow, feelers creeping out along the darkness without ever touching Diana. Every time they draw close, she need only step aside.
The spider creature must have a name, but it is unknown to Diana, who barely remembers her own.
The creature calls out again, a soft but pleading sound, and the sadness of it hangs so thick it chokes inside Diana's throat. Quickly, she drops down to one knee and extends her fingers toward the bonfire's flame; she cannot endure this any longer and soon the sounds of the room and nearly all the world itself disappear into the void.
There is only this fire, its light, and the ghosts of her fellow travelers.
*
She sees the face across the fire and thinks of reaching out for her. It would hurt, of course; pyromancers are not immune to every source of fire, only their own. The pain would be immense but she would heal or she would die. Either of these options are fleeting and without meaning, while the girl on the other side of the veil is so real and present and very much a constant.
In those moments hanging half between life and death, waiting for the bonfire's crackle and snap to wake her from the darkness, Diana sees herself standing in a clearing in the woods. There's a cabin in the distance and a spiral of thick heavy smoke rises to the sky. Someone has set their own fire to keep the cabin warm. Drawing closer, she can smell the ash.
It stings her nostrils like the burn of unspent tears at the back of your eyes. She swallows and tastes something bitter on her tongue. "Hello?" she calls out into the woods and a voice calls back from inside the cabin.
The voice is laughing, saying, "Diana," and it's hers. It's the voice of Diana's one, the magic girl whose deep eyes stare at her from ever closer to the flames.
She is much closer now because she is here, arms wrapping around sore muscle and bone and squeezing as if she hopes to somehow keep all of Diana held together with only her hands and arms for support.
Diana opens her eyes and they are together. She closes them and sees the flames and the girl.
"Diana," she says, but only that, because it is the only thing either of them can remember with certainty.
And then again: Diana, like a humming deep inside her, a thrumming in her chest.
*
She does not always fight alone, even when it is not her dark angel who walks beside her through the dense tangle of the forest and the many terrors of the waking day.
Diana has been called upon to aid the others -- the shadow figures who often rest beside her at the fire. She cannot say with certainty where it is that she goes or where they come from, but the land itself does not seem to change under her feet. She feels as though she has never left, though subtle details may not remain the same.
She slips fingers in between the folds of time as if through pages in a book, latching on and taking hold until she feels herself shifting slightly, subtly changing. She opens her eyes again and a figure stands before her.
The technique of it is simple. One must first look for the subtle marks in the earth that, once noticed, seem to burn a bright and glowing red. There in the dirt, a name etched in ancient and nearly forgotten script. Touch your hand to the symbols for long enough and the hand which drew them starts to take form inside your mind, drawing and extending until you see the whole of the person.
Knowing where to look, you see these shadow soldiers everywhere.
Here waits Nerua, a knight in dented steel. There at the base of the winding staircase is Penelope, with dark grim eyes and an even grimmer purpose in the glint of her blood-stained axe.
Diana places one hand to the words in the dirt and whispers a furtive prayer to the sky above.
The air around her shifts, and in the dust at the back of her own mind's eye, a figure starts taking shape.
*
"Sister," the voice says, low and halting but persistent. "Sister, please."
Diana knows that it cannot mean her. For as best she can remember, she has no sister. And yet still, she gives answer, saying, "Oh, yes. It is I." Her own voice is small, grown brittle through lack of use.
The other voice is much larger than it has any rights to be. Like the creature itself, it seems to swell far beyond its natural means, echoing throughout the cavern. "Oh, I knew you would not leave me."
The spider creature's hairy carapace is swollen and deformed, once great legs lying limp and forgotten, curled beneath her on the floor. She is twisted and broken, blind from the poison of the egg sacks which surround her, glistening in the fire's glow.
Her true sister will not come again. She is dead, slain by Diana's own hand.
The beast the others call Quelaag screamed as she died, consumed in flame. Blood streamed down Diana's face from a gash to her skull, mixed with tears of pain and frustration. The smoke stung her eyes and the smell as the flesh was devoured was almost unbearable.
The air was choked with death and shuddering with the echo of screams.
She did not ever want to return here, but was glad later that she had. What was left of the corpse proved useful. Inky black handfuls of humanity ripped from the monster's core serve to invigorate her still, strength and resolve singing within Diana's limbs.
She cannot falter now.
The two bells of prophecy are rung and the end feels so near, even as the path ahead seems to twist and turn, sliding away under her feet.
So she did not hesitate -- once the final death throws had subsided -- to rip one of Quelaag's long and jagged limbs from her side. Deep within the cavernous darkness of the crypts, a blacksmith forged it into a rough but ready blade. Hammer blows were struck and incantations spoken and now the blade itself seems to glow an angry red -- even away from fire's light.
The light is almost burning to the touch, but Diana cannot help to think it suits her. Even as it hurts her.
Sometimes she wonders if the way it seems to bite and sting against her hand is the dead creature's last revenge; but the more she seems to give herself over to it -- the pain and power both -- the stronger she feels her arm becoming, and every blow which follows.
Hold it long enough, hissing through the pain, and the sword almost seems to sing. They dance together.
This is the song she knows best, and the one language in which she is truly fluent.
*
In the darkness of this cave, she hears them moving. The rattle of skeletal footfalls sliding over granite ledges is unnerving. It slips beneath her skin, settling into her own bones, like the ache of an oncoming storm. She hears the thunder rising in each and every heavy thud of her heart.
When the end comes, she will purge these dark places with fire.
They will beg and plead, scrape and scramble, but she will see them all burned before her. What use has she for such monsters who cannot keep to the path?
It's not so hard to remember the way.
She places one hand into the fire, and her fingers itch to feel her sword.
*
Diana thinks to herself that she has never seen the woman, her one, with her skin blemished. Such decay always comes with each new death and the slow loss of what once made them human. It is the way of things.
Can someone truly hold the grip on their humanity for so long? Or is she perhaps not truly an undead, yet come to the land of eternal fire and screaming of her own free will? Is such a thing possible?
Perhaps she has been there after all, in those times when Diana looked but could not see her, hidden amongst shadows with her perfect pale cheek rotting and the flesh pulled back from that small smile. It might be that she is always there, but Diana hasn't seen. Surely that is for the best. No one should have to see their wife in such a condition.
The feeling that would surely grip Diana's heart would be worse than any half-death.
A simple table and a small meal. It has been so long since she ate. She can remember the feeling of it, the taste of it on her tongue. The woman smiles from across the room. She kisses Diana's forehead and ruffles her hair.
"Diana," she says, like a favorite verse in an almost forgotten song.
They eat together and share secret smiles.
*
There in the dirt, a Rebecca who carries a hammer. Here at the door, Sylvia with a hard-set jaw and bright flashing eyes.
But one name catches her rapt attention -- round the corner, pressed close to the wall, as if tucked away into hiding. The letters flicker in the dirt and Diana feels a tightness inside her chest when her fingers dance across them. She knows that it's Her even before the figure has fully taken shape and if Diana still drew breath at all anymore, this would surely be enough to stop it.
Suzanne. Her name is Suzanne.
She thrusts herself agains the void, plunging fingers inside the slippery wet folds of time and gasping once to feel the echoes of realities that vibrate through her palm. Without any hesitation -- and perhaps in some considerable desperation -- she lunges further, deeper, without any reservation or fear.
If there is some darkness that waits for them between the carefully creased pages of each reality, it could have her now. It might slip up behind Diana and devour her whole, she would not even care, just give her this one moment.
And in that brief and shining second, it's almost as if she truly feels Her. Their fingers touch and she is drawn forth, shifting and rising from a dusty smoke as if crawled from a cocoon.
The dark-eyed angel shifts the grip of her sword-hand and looks about with apparent curiosity. She looks at Diana, and suddenly she stops.
For just one moment, they each wait and stare.
But then she points and Diana nods. She follows.
The path cannot be forgotten.
*
She is magnificent.
She spins and leaps, cutting through the air ahead of every swing and swipe of the golem's giant fist. Once or twice Diana catches herself stopping to stare, forgetting the fight at hand completely. But the woman tosses her an impatient look and the thirst for blood returns in a rushing wave. She lights a blaze against her palm and hurls it at the golem's head.
You cannot set fire to stone, but it seems you can cause it much discomfort.
The creature turns to her now, swinging and swaying on unsteady feet. Diana leaps, twisting the jagged blade around in her palm and feeling it carve its niche ever-deeper into her flesh. It is almost a part of her by now -- an added limb that throbs with the ever increasing speed of her pulse.
Diana lands a blow square against its knee, but the golem is already losing interest again as bright blue lights of a sorcerer's spell flare up around its head. It lets out a low keening noise almost like screaming and rushes for the other girl.
Again, she leaps and twists, spinning gracefully through the air -- but the earth is not there to catch her. She is falling and so is Diana's heart, plummeting down through her throat and into the deepest pit in her chest.
No…
Now she is running too. She is leaping head first between the golem's legs, lashing out once with a blow to its knees, but never stopping. The cliff's edge grows closer and then suddenly she is sprinting into the clouds. She is leaping, she is falling.
Beneath her, she can see the girl. She spins and whirls even still, buffeted against the wind by her trailing cloak. It slows her descent just enough that for one brief moment, their two forms almost overlap, suspended in time and space. The air rushes by, filling their lungs, and Diana can't breathe, cannot even gasp. The girl beside her reaches, groping into nothingness. Their hands pass through one another.
She can't breathe and the pressure is so terribly great when she tries to smile into the impact. The earth reaches up to catch them, and in that moment every piece of her is shattered.
She wakes up beside the bonfire screaming, her hand reaching toward the fire.
Through the dusty smoke and fading light of dusk, she can see her -- her Suzanne -- there, equally as breathless and shaken. Dark locks are plastered to her forehead with sweat and her eyes are locked on Diana's.
*
The wind whistles through the woods until the trees themselves seem to moan.
There is ash hung thick in the tees as it is in her hair. The stench should be unbearable if it wasn't so much like coming home.
Then it comes. "Diana," she calls, that old repeating refrain. "Diana!" An entire language exists inside the walls of these three syllables, one simple word.
But then.
"You're here. Oh, praise Gwyn."
The shock of the new words is profound, landing in her ear like a direct blow to her chest. As though needles had slipped, soundless, beneath her skin. "… what?"
But this is now, it must be real. Her eyes are open, they must be, and She is so close.
The firmness of her grip as fingers coil, wrapping round each other. Her voice and then her tongue, pressing moist at Diana's ear.
She is so real.
"I have worried," she says, with fingers working the frayed edges of Diana's shirt collar. "Why did you not come sooner?"
"I'm... sorry." Any answers or excuses she might have had, she no longer remembers. "I had meant to. I really--"
But that is really as far as her words can go, abruptly snuffed out by a sudden rising pressure, the force of Suzanne's mouth.
Suzanne. Suzanne, her name is sweet Suzanne.
She tastes like burning. Like cinder and smoke, unspent tears and forgotten expectation. Her tongue teases but her smile is small and soft like the fluttering heartbeat of some dying bird.
"I've... missed you," Diana whispers, her voice sounding worn and forgotten, like autumn creeping in under every sound.
"I know."
Suzanne's touch is warm and her voice is profoundly loud. It is everywhere -- inside, under and in between.
"I know," she says again, much softer, and the words are like a blanket wrapping round Diana's tired limbs so that, finally, she can rest.
She smiles into the next kiss and then slowly, softly, they settle into one another like a sunset.
Cast: Diana Taurasi/Sue Bird
Summary: In the land of Lordran, there is no such thing as death. There's only walking or waking again, and whether or not you remember why you bother to do either.
Notes: Originally started as a birthday gift for thebasseffect, who encouraged me to take my time until I liked it instead of being timely. I'm super grateful, because I think it turned out pretty good -- which is largely due to her serving as a consistently helpful beta. Thanks to vicki595 as well for declaring it good enough to post.
Set in the universe of the video game Dark Souls, it's about a world where everyone dies, over and over, until they go insane.
As you can imagine, it's super upbeat! Close to 5,000 words. I know this isn't the fic you'd really expect post-Olympics, but I promise other things are coming (soon).
Swing sweet charity, take what's left of me;
a new beginning, or is this the end?
Swing sweet Seraphim, take me back again;
or watch me make the messes of men.
*
At first she is reluctant to call upon others for help. It seems ill-fitting that the chosen one who will bring an end to the rule of the flame and serve as salvation for all humanity should require the help of mere strangers in overcoming even the earliest obstacles on her journey.
Help is a concept she has never been truly intimate with, but it is not the only word she has forgotten how to say aloud. Her voice has gone raw except for grunts and moaning, the whispered hiss of pain and the rattle of a death cry before waking up to start all over again.
There are so few chances to speak to another soul -- one that will hear and understand. Most of her undead brothers and sisters have moved beyond the point of reason and comprehension, though sometimes she thinks that theirs is a language she knows far better. The rattle of sword and the sweet slick sound of leather sliding against stone are like toddlers talking, patterned and repeating, like coming home again.
She shuffles her feet, moving in time with her opponent. This is a dialogue between the two of them, but only one will like where it ends. She parries and thrusts, sliding her axe upward past the jut of his hip into the cavity of his chest. They press against each other, struggle briefly, and when his rotting mouth lets out a sigh against her cheek, she can't help but smile.
This kind of conversation, she understands, and knows how to finish.
But in those rare times passing a traveler on the road, she often only smiles tersely, afraid to open her mouth only to discover that the words have finally left after all.
*
Diana. My name is Diana.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself, just to keep your sanity. The mind is all you have left when both dignity and good health have been stripped away.
Lordran is a dark and craggy place, with more mountains than trees. The sun shines brightly when the clouds drift apart, but the wind blows cold when you're caught out in a barren turn upon a cliff.
It is not the land of her birth but it will be her home from now until the end of time. This is the contract of the Darksign and it is binding. Not even death can sever this connection. There is no end in a place without beginning or even middle. Time is inconsequential here, without any order or sequence. Any one moment is all moments at once and it will always be this way. Perhaps it always has been and the dead have always gathered here, trapped inside an endless cycle of violent glory and waste.
She thinks in terms like "they," "their," and "we" because it's a small comfort. Sometimes she even thinks that she can see them, gathering close to the flames. Diana reaches out to warm her hands and for just a moment her eyes catch a glimmer of another person through the screen of smoke and ash. My name is Diana. I come from the swamps.
*
Sometimes the chosen one wonders if the others, whoever they may be, are all just the same as she is. Have they also been told that they are here to replace Lord Gwyn and kindle the flame? Do they believe the Kingseeker's slow and steady proclamations without question or do they hesitate as she does?
It is simply not in the nature of a pyromancer to believe everything she is told.
They are peoples of the swamp land because they are unwanted anywhere else. It is their home, the only one that will not turn them away. Others fear the fire, the temptation and power it offers, and its eternal link with the undead. But to the peoples of the swamp, it is like an old friend. She cups a flame inside her palm, feeling its light tickle against her skin.
She holds her hand out above a pile of rust and ash at the base of a blood-stained sword and flames leap up to meet her touch. She wonders if the others might draw back from fear even as she herself pushes fingertips closer to the fire.
And there she is again: the girl with the piercing eyes. Unlike the other shadow figures gathering near, she sits especially close to the bonfire's glow. So unafraid of the heat is she that Diana thinks she might be pyromancer too, though she wears the robes of a sorcerer of the Vinheim Dragon College. It could be she looted it from a corpse.
Just the thought of it makes the center of Diana's right hand ache from remembering the feel of bone crunching under steel and the teeth-rattling shudder when her axe catches briefly between two ribs. In such cases, you must twist your hands and pivot your hips, wrenching the weapon back and then swiping again to the head.
Always aim for the head, or else between the shoulder blades.
Diana smiles to herself and sees the girl still there, looking at her across the fire. Not at her, of course, but at the darkness behind, beneath, around and inside them all and for just a moment she thinks she can see her starting to smile too.
*
The Kingseeker's smile is great and fearsome. His teeth are as long as Diana's arm is from wrist to elbow and when he pulls his lips back in a grin she can feel the air that rushes out striking up against her chest like a fist. When he speaks there is a sound like bones being ground to dust under the slow turning of a wheel.
"Many have gone before you," he says. "But none have returned."
Diana returns his smile with one of her own, accompanied by a small grimace. "That's not how it works here." A part of her thinks that it can't be wise to argue with someone whose eyes are larger than your head, yet she can't help but laugh, saying, "We all come back. The bonfires won't let us do otherwise."
The Primordial Serpent turns his head from side to side and the heavy jowls that hang from his cheeks make the wind stir all around them. Diana shifts her weight, feeling a slight pressure, but maintains her stance.
"Fate has chosen you, but proceed with caution," he warns, still speaking slowly. "If you turn Hollow, you shall not return."
This is all it takes to make her quiet and humbled. It isn't death she fears, but the waking again. Even now, she still shivers to feel the heat of the fire when she opens her eyes. She stands slowly, newly reformed muscles flexing, and reaches back into her own thoughts to try and touch… something. Some single part of her that remains. Does sanity have a feeling? Can you touch it with your own mind's eye and see the rounded corners of your way of thinking?
The corruption that comes from dying here is not only of the flesh, but of the mind. Hollowing is a spiritual sickness, to be sure, taken root inside one's own head. My name is Diana, she recites again. I am fighting for all of us.
More and more often, she wakes up not remembering how she came to be here. It may seem a mercy at first, but it frightens her. These mistakes are meant to prepare for what lies ahead. Learn from every error and every blade shoved through your back. This is the bonfire's blessing and its curse.
The first time she forgot the feeling of dying, it was almost a relief. It was pleasing somehow to open her eyes and feel nothing at all. None of that moment of panic -- the very human instinct that lives inside that memory of dying.
That faint and flickering impulse to run even though your nerves have ceased to function isn't there, screaming inside her head, when she smiles at the flames and tries to remember how she got to be here. The quest itself she recalls, it's always on her mind, but not the setback that has her seated here now.
It seemed a blessing the first time, but it all came rushing back again the next time she lay bleeding on the cold stone floor, a black knight rising up above her to deliver a crushing final blow that split through leather armor and straight down to her spine.
"Please," she whispered through dry, bloodless lips, but the knights of Gwyn are ever without mercy. He stood silent except for the low and rising whistle of steel cutting through the air. The roar of it grew louder, faster, closer. "Please," she said again, and as the blade rushed through to clang against the stones below, she smiled to herself to think, I haven't forgotten after all. I still know how to speak.
*
Diana didn't ask for this. No one does really and it's difficult to say where it comes from.
The branding of the Darksign only turns visible on your flesh once you're already dead, with no notice of when it was left. It's then that you come to the land of the undead and wait to go slowly mad.
That is the design and intent of the place. Its form and function is futility. Here is a pretty crypt for you to wander through, with a ceiling made of stars and the most lovely mountain views you could ask for.
It's easy to see the appeal of giving up, but that only comes with time. At first it all seems simple.
For humans, death is frightening. The finality of it could almost choke you, keep you from wanting to breath in at all, but here it's in the very air. She draws close to the water and the blue green mists rise up, taking form in swirling shapes and howling. These ghosts reach out with grasping claws for fingers, reaching for her heart. They wish to rip out her insides, what remains of what once might have been called human.
She was once human, after all.
The first time you pull the very humanity from inside a rotting corpse to feel it fluttering in your palm, it seems like something from a dream. It is still abstract and unreal, duty more than necessity.
Later, it becomes something more. She crushes the inky black substance against her palm, absorbing the tiny flame of true life left to the undead boy that's dissolving into nothingness at her feet. Diana feels herself growing whole, tattered flesh repairing itself and strength returning to her limbs. Even the sword hilt in her hand seems to vibrate with renewed energy.
When she swings the blade overhead, it whistles like the gathering of dark clouds or an army on a hillside. The end is drawing closer, whatever it may be.
*
The life that came before this one remains to her as something even less than memory. It is only a shadow of the past, a sense of something long since lost. Some day, she thinks, all that happens to me now will be the same way, like so much ash on my clothes scattered in a sudden wind.
She imagines a new past for herself and thinks of it sometimes when taking her first steps away from the fire. She knows the distraction will almost certainly kill her and that death, though fleeting, is always painful. It seems worth it anyhow, to imagine a place that could be called a home. She thinks she knows that word even still, however foreign and distant the thought might be.
Home.
That girl is there, the one with the dark hair and even darker eyes. But here in this dream world of the past, the girl smiles so that it reaches all the way to her eyes, and the feeling lights up inside Diana's chest like the burning of her bonfire. The girls' eyes are bright but also deep. They are almost infinite, but their time together is not.
Maybe it's a skeleton's sword that splits through her ribs, coming in at the shoulder and out near her lungs, or maybe it's an arrow straight through her thigh. It could be a war hammer the size of a giant's fist or flames from a dragon roasting her inside her own armor like a pig across a spit. Whatever does it, the dream will fade as Diana coughs a little more of what remains of her mortal life's essence out to smear the floor along with flecks of her own blood.
Her knee is bent the wrong way and the pain radiates out from the wound to her shoulder in waves. Just as the sword slips from her numb fingers, she can see the girl smiling to her from across their dream world.
"Diana," she says, because in this dream they are almost as one and so of course this girl would know her name.
My name is Diana. I come from the swamps.
*
They cannot speak to each other through this veil, but what words exist that are sufficient for the woman that lives inside your dreams.
The veil is no substantial thing. It cannot be touched or even truly seen. Instead it is sensed in the air and in whispers of movement and sound. Sometimes she could almost feel her heart beating against its pressure, like a hand squeezing inside her chest. The drumming of her heart, if it can still be called one, increases.
Like Diana herself, the rotting organ is only going through the motions -- like a person stumbling toward a memory at the back of your mind, long since started to fade. Retrace your last known steps to find where you left that essential missing piece.
She can see the stain her own blood left on the ground, darkening against the cold stones. Not too long ago, her corpse lay here, fading into dust. Diana crouches low and touches her fingertips to the ground. It's cool and slick against her fingers, which come away an angry dark red.
So this is real then, and not just another dream. It's growing harder to tell the two apart. She closes her eyes and the world is angry and dark, red with hate and fire and blood. She opens her eyes and the girl is standing there, hand reaching out to join fingers together, palms pressed close and hand to hand.
*
There's a soft sound in the air like bells, or maybe it's only a memory. They rang here once not so long ago.
Though time is different now.
What matters the passing of an hour, day, or even a year when there is nothing left to her that ages? It is not for her to grow old, but to simply fade away. Instead of a constant progression, she is living inside a countdown where she cannot see the clock.
The voice that echoes in the air is quiet and low, speaking in some language she does not know. Perhaps she never knew it.
Yes, Diana thinks, to reassure herself. This is not my native tongue. And then, just to prove to herself that she still knows how, she says it once aloud. "Yes."
The tinkling sound grows suddenly quiet and the long and delicate limbs that stretch out to occupy almost the whole of this cave grow still. There in their center is the source of the noise -- a creature that is half spider and half girl. She is weak and slow, feelers creeping out along the darkness without ever touching Diana. Every time they draw close, she need only step aside.
The spider creature must have a name, but it is unknown to Diana, who barely remembers her own.
The creature calls out again, a soft but pleading sound, and the sadness of it hangs so thick it chokes inside Diana's throat. Quickly, she drops down to one knee and extends her fingers toward the bonfire's flame; she cannot endure this any longer and soon the sounds of the room and nearly all the world itself disappear into the void.
There is only this fire, its light, and the ghosts of her fellow travelers.
*
She sees the face across the fire and thinks of reaching out for her. It would hurt, of course; pyromancers are not immune to every source of fire, only their own. The pain would be immense but she would heal or she would die. Either of these options are fleeting and without meaning, while the girl on the other side of the veil is so real and present and very much a constant.
In those moments hanging half between life and death, waiting for the bonfire's crackle and snap to wake her from the darkness, Diana sees herself standing in a clearing in the woods. There's a cabin in the distance and a spiral of thick heavy smoke rises to the sky. Someone has set their own fire to keep the cabin warm. Drawing closer, she can smell the ash.
It stings her nostrils like the burn of unspent tears at the back of your eyes. She swallows and tastes something bitter on her tongue. "Hello?" she calls out into the woods and a voice calls back from inside the cabin.
The voice is laughing, saying, "Diana," and it's hers. It's the voice of Diana's one, the magic girl whose deep eyes stare at her from ever closer to the flames.
She is much closer now because she is here, arms wrapping around sore muscle and bone and squeezing as if she hopes to somehow keep all of Diana held together with only her hands and arms for support.
Diana opens her eyes and they are together. She closes them and sees the flames and the girl.
"Diana," she says, but only that, because it is the only thing either of them can remember with certainty.
And then again: Diana, like a humming deep inside her, a thrumming in her chest.
*
She does not always fight alone, even when it is not her dark angel who walks beside her through the dense tangle of the forest and the many terrors of the waking day.
Diana has been called upon to aid the others -- the shadow figures who often rest beside her at the fire. She cannot say with certainty where it is that she goes or where they come from, but the land itself does not seem to change under her feet. She feels as though she has never left, though subtle details may not remain the same.
She slips fingers in between the folds of time as if through pages in a book, latching on and taking hold until she feels herself shifting slightly, subtly changing. She opens her eyes again and a figure stands before her.
The technique of it is simple. One must first look for the subtle marks in the earth that, once noticed, seem to burn a bright and glowing red. There in the dirt, a name etched in ancient and nearly forgotten script. Touch your hand to the symbols for long enough and the hand which drew them starts to take form inside your mind, drawing and extending until you see the whole of the person.
Knowing where to look, you see these shadow soldiers everywhere.
Here waits Nerua, a knight in dented steel. There at the base of the winding staircase is Penelope, with dark grim eyes and an even grimmer purpose in the glint of her blood-stained axe.
Diana places one hand to the words in the dirt and whispers a furtive prayer to the sky above.
The air around her shifts, and in the dust at the back of her own mind's eye, a figure starts taking shape.
*
"Sister," the voice says, low and halting but persistent. "Sister, please."
Diana knows that it cannot mean her. For as best she can remember, she has no sister. And yet still, she gives answer, saying, "Oh, yes. It is I." Her own voice is small, grown brittle through lack of use.
The other voice is much larger than it has any rights to be. Like the creature itself, it seems to swell far beyond its natural means, echoing throughout the cavern. "Oh, I knew you would not leave me."
The spider creature's hairy carapace is swollen and deformed, once great legs lying limp and forgotten, curled beneath her on the floor. She is twisted and broken, blind from the poison of the egg sacks which surround her, glistening in the fire's glow.
Her true sister will not come again. She is dead, slain by Diana's own hand.
The beast the others call Quelaag screamed as she died, consumed in flame. Blood streamed down Diana's face from a gash to her skull, mixed with tears of pain and frustration. The smoke stung her eyes and the smell as the flesh was devoured was almost unbearable.
The air was choked with death and shuddering with the echo of screams.
She did not ever want to return here, but was glad later that she had. What was left of the corpse proved useful. Inky black handfuls of humanity ripped from the monster's core serve to invigorate her still, strength and resolve singing within Diana's limbs.
She cannot falter now.
The two bells of prophecy are rung and the end feels so near, even as the path ahead seems to twist and turn, sliding away under her feet.
So she did not hesitate -- once the final death throws had subsided -- to rip one of Quelaag's long and jagged limbs from her side. Deep within the cavernous darkness of the crypts, a blacksmith forged it into a rough but ready blade. Hammer blows were struck and incantations spoken and now the blade itself seems to glow an angry red -- even away from fire's light.
The light is almost burning to the touch, but Diana cannot help to think it suits her. Even as it hurts her.
Sometimes she wonders if the way it seems to bite and sting against her hand is the dead creature's last revenge; but the more she seems to give herself over to it -- the pain and power both -- the stronger she feels her arm becoming, and every blow which follows.
Hold it long enough, hissing through the pain, and the sword almost seems to sing. They dance together.
This is the song she knows best, and the one language in which she is truly fluent.
*
In the darkness of this cave, she hears them moving. The rattle of skeletal footfalls sliding over granite ledges is unnerving. It slips beneath her skin, settling into her own bones, like the ache of an oncoming storm. She hears the thunder rising in each and every heavy thud of her heart.
When the end comes, she will purge these dark places with fire.
They will beg and plead, scrape and scramble, but she will see them all burned before her. What use has she for such monsters who cannot keep to the path?
It's not so hard to remember the way.
She places one hand into the fire, and her fingers itch to feel her sword.
*
Diana thinks to herself that she has never seen the woman, her one, with her skin blemished. Such decay always comes with each new death and the slow loss of what once made them human. It is the way of things.
Can someone truly hold the grip on their humanity for so long? Or is she perhaps not truly an undead, yet come to the land of eternal fire and screaming of her own free will? Is such a thing possible?
Perhaps she has been there after all, in those times when Diana looked but could not see her, hidden amongst shadows with her perfect pale cheek rotting and the flesh pulled back from that small smile. It might be that she is always there, but Diana hasn't seen. Surely that is for the best. No one should have to see their wife in such a condition.
The feeling that would surely grip Diana's heart would be worse than any half-death.
A simple table and a small meal. It has been so long since she ate. She can remember the feeling of it, the taste of it on her tongue. The woman smiles from across the room. She kisses Diana's forehead and ruffles her hair.
"Diana," she says, like a favorite verse in an almost forgotten song.
They eat together and share secret smiles.
*
There in the dirt, a Rebecca who carries a hammer. Here at the door, Sylvia with a hard-set jaw and bright flashing eyes.
But one name catches her rapt attention -- round the corner, pressed close to the wall, as if tucked away into hiding. The letters flicker in the dirt and Diana feels a tightness inside her chest when her fingers dance across them. She knows that it's Her even before the figure has fully taken shape and if Diana still drew breath at all anymore, this would surely be enough to stop it.
Suzanne. Her name is Suzanne.
She thrusts herself agains the void, plunging fingers inside the slippery wet folds of time and gasping once to feel the echoes of realities that vibrate through her palm. Without any hesitation -- and perhaps in some considerable desperation -- she lunges further, deeper, without any reservation or fear.
If there is some darkness that waits for them between the carefully creased pages of each reality, it could have her now. It might slip up behind Diana and devour her whole, she would not even care, just give her this one moment.
And in that brief and shining second, it's almost as if she truly feels Her. Their fingers touch and she is drawn forth, shifting and rising from a dusty smoke as if crawled from a cocoon.
The dark-eyed angel shifts the grip of her sword-hand and looks about with apparent curiosity. She looks at Diana, and suddenly she stops.
For just one moment, they each wait and stare.
But then she points and Diana nods. She follows.
The path cannot be forgotten.
*
She is magnificent.
She spins and leaps, cutting through the air ahead of every swing and swipe of the golem's giant fist. Once or twice Diana catches herself stopping to stare, forgetting the fight at hand completely. But the woman tosses her an impatient look and the thirst for blood returns in a rushing wave. She lights a blaze against her palm and hurls it at the golem's head.
You cannot set fire to stone, but it seems you can cause it much discomfort.
The creature turns to her now, swinging and swaying on unsteady feet. Diana leaps, twisting the jagged blade around in her palm and feeling it carve its niche ever-deeper into her flesh. It is almost a part of her by now -- an added limb that throbs with the ever increasing speed of her pulse.
Diana lands a blow square against its knee, but the golem is already losing interest again as bright blue lights of a sorcerer's spell flare up around its head. It lets out a low keening noise almost like screaming and rushes for the other girl.
Again, she leaps and twists, spinning gracefully through the air -- but the earth is not there to catch her. She is falling and so is Diana's heart, plummeting down through her throat and into the deepest pit in her chest.
No…
Now she is running too. She is leaping head first between the golem's legs, lashing out once with a blow to its knees, but never stopping. The cliff's edge grows closer and then suddenly she is sprinting into the clouds. She is leaping, she is falling.
Beneath her, she can see the girl. She spins and whirls even still, buffeted against the wind by her trailing cloak. It slows her descent just enough that for one brief moment, their two forms almost overlap, suspended in time and space. The air rushes by, filling their lungs, and Diana can't breathe, cannot even gasp. The girl beside her reaches, groping into nothingness. Their hands pass through one another.
She can't breathe and the pressure is so terribly great when she tries to smile into the impact. The earth reaches up to catch them, and in that moment every piece of her is shattered.
She wakes up beside the bonfire screaming, her hand reaching toward the fire.
Through the dusty smoke and fading light of dusk, she can see her -- her Suzanne -- there, equally as breathless and shaken. Dark locks are plastered to her forehead with sweat and her eyes are locked on Diana's.
*
The wind whistles through the woods until the trees themselves seem to moan.
There is ash hung thick in the tees as it is in her hair. The stench should be unbearable if it wasn't so much like coming home.
Then it comes. "Diana," she calls, that old repeating refrain. "Diana!" An entire language exists inside the walls of these three syllables, one simple word.
But then.
"You're here. Oh, praise Gwyn."
The shock of the new words is profound, landing in her ear like a direct blow to her chest. As though needles had slipped, soundless, beneath her skin. "… what?"
But this is now, it must be real. Her eyes are open, they must be, and She is so close.
The firmness of her grip as fingers coil, wrapping round each other. Her voice and then her tongue, pressing moist at Diana's ear.
She is so real.
"I have worried," she says, with fingers working the frayed edges of Diana's shirt collar. "Why did you not come sooner?"
"I'm... sorry." Any answers or excuses she might have had, she no longer remembers. "I had meant to. I really--"
But that is really as far as her words can go, abruptly snuffed out by a sudden rising pressure, the force of Suzanne's mouth.
Suzanne. Suzanne, her name is sweet Suzanne.
She tastes like burning. Like cinder and smoke, unspent tears and forgotten expectation. Her tongue teases but her smile is small and soft like the fluttering heartbeat of some dying bird.
"I've... missed you," Diana whispers, her voice sounding worn and forgotten, like autumn creeping in under every sound.
"I know."
Suzanne's touch is warm and her voice is profoundly loud. It is everywhere -- inside, under and in between.
"I know," she says again, much softer, and the words are like a blanket wrapping round Diana's tired limbs so that, finally, she can rest.
She smiles into the next kiss and then slowly, softly, they settle into one another like a sunset.