Archive of Our Own

They allow Lorian to see him six months after he’s born. The high priestess regards him like an ink stain as he looks down at the bundle in her arms. Lothric (they named him that after he survived the first week, and how gaudy it is to name a child after the kingdom he’s yet to inherit) rests like a doll, still and silent. 

He- his brother is an awfully ugly thing, all pink and wrinkled like the skin of his fingers when he makes a fist. Lorian thinks he would hardly be the length of his forearm if he felt compelled to measure. The knights let him watch a wyvern hatch once, and all laughed at the face he made when the thing burst out of its egg. He gets much of the same impression now.

Lothric is nested deep inside the violet folds of his swaddling cloth. Lorian leans over and a strand of his hair escapes from behind his ear, dangling like a string. If he looks close enough, he can see a matching shade of white that curls in wisps on his head. He teases at the cloth, and Lothric grasps feebly at his index finger, hands capped with nails the length of the stitches in Lorian’s waistcoat. His fist is a pathetic thing, smaller than a walnut and as soft as velvet. 

This is his lord. Lorian was born for him before Lothric was so much as thought of. Quietly, he wonders what that makes of him beforehand, if the purpose for his function was only revealed a scant six months ago. What is he to do now? Lothric is so pathetic that he gets the impression that he would shatter like crystal if Lorian so much as breathed near him. 

The child is divine. They share the same mother. Lorian is divine too, if on a technicality. He’s no lord. Lothric is. Lothric is barely half a year old, and he’s laid claim to all the excess that the castle can afford. 

Lothric blinks, slow and tired. His eyes are blue.

There’s an intruder in the inner walls, armour discarded in pieces like the shell of a moulting beetle. It managed to catch one knight off guard with a blade thrust in between the gap of his helmet and gorget and gut a second before the rest managed to corner it with their pikes against some wall in the dragon barracks. Lorian watches from a balcony, somewhat disinterestedly as the courtyard below attempts to regain order. The knights herd pilgrims out of the gates, tattered charcoal robes fluttering like loose papers in the mess. 

His father sends for him within the hour. 

Oceiros is a painting of indolence on his throne, a goblet of wine swirling in one hand and his mouth set like a gash. His eyes rake over Lorian as he kneels, all at one coarse and sharp. 

“Lorian,” he greets, tossing his name around as if the very syllables bored him. “There’s a hollow in the castle. I want you to kill it.” 

Lorian keeps his face still as he searches for some indication of a lie on the king’s features. He finds nothing, of course, save for the sneer that he seems to reserve only for him. The king takes any trace of hesitation on Lorian’s face and measures it in cowardice. He raised his eyebrows. He might as well have burst out screaming.

“Have the knights not done so already?” 

“I’ve told them to stand by.” 

“For what reason? It would be better to kill it while it’s cornered.”

“Which is why I have given you the order to do so.” He sags, resting his head on his free hand. 

Lorian swallows. “It has already killed two knights-”

“And so we should let it kill two more?” he snaps, sneer spilling over like an open wound. Lorian bites on the urge to flinch. “How about we let it slaughter an entire battalion while we both stand here and stutter? Why not your brother too? I heard he felt well enough to go outside yesterday.” 

Oceiros has him pinned in a corner. Protesting will only lead to more claims of wasted time, even if the king was the one who took all the ceremony and pomp of a royal summons instead of simply giving Lorian his orders outright. The king outmaneuvers him with ease, and all Lorian is left with is a resigned sense of anger at himself. 

“Then it is a dangerous enemy, is it not?” he suggests, voice coming out far too meek for his liking. 

“Most likely” He takes a long quaff from his goblet, throat bobbing as he drinks. Lorian’s eyes catch on the bright red bead that trails down towards his jaw before he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “Is that overly concerning to you? I’m disappointed, you know. I thought you were better than this.” 

Lorian knows that the king gives him about as much thought as he does the dirt on his shoe. He can wipe it off. Lorian is a persistent thing that’s been a snag in his hair for the whole thirteen years of his existence, like a poorly rendered corner of the family portrait. He’s either a coward or a menace or completely nonexistent depending on what would be the most convenient thing to call him at the very moment. 

“I am not afraid,” his voice hardens, eyes narrowed under the white curtain of his hair. 

He smiles. The wine stains his teeth red. “You should be rejoicing, you know. This is your birthright. Most princes are not so lucky to claim it so young.” 

This is his inheritance, laying at the feet of a hollow discarding itself in some dilapidated corner of the castle. He’ll either kill the thing and claim its soul and the brief privilege of his father’s approval, or he’ll die in a humiliating manner and they’ll melt his sword and crown down into windchimes to calm Lothric when he can’t sleep at night. 

Either way, he’s expendable. 

“Go on, my son” Oceiros toasts, teeth sharp. “You were not bred to be a coward.”

The king washes the blood off his hands personally. Lorian is a statue that he takes in his hands and shows how to move. His form crushes him and petrifies him; he’s a comet that renders the horizon unintelligible. There’s a distinct scent that carries in his hair as he leans over his shoulder. Jasmine from his gardens. Chamomile to get him to sleep. Monkshood, hemlock- what was it again? Oleander, hung to dry in the hot months. Thorns to prick out his eyes. Chimes for Lothric. He was stupid enough to get caught in the arterial spray as he stuck his sword into the thing’s neck. 

“Good man” he hears distantly, through a veil of fog and the blood crusting on his face.

The king’s nails are long, he notices. Long enough that they scratch at the back of his hands and leave thin lines of pink against white. So unusually kind of him, as if he hadn’t kicked at him like a disobedient hound an hour ago. He leans into his touch and bites his tongue, and spits out the blood when he leaves. 

Lothric is strange. Lorian hasn’t met many other children, but he’s still smart enough to have some preconceived notion of how they should act. They’re supposed to tumble around and throw tantrums over asinine things and all that. Sometimes, if his mother is feeling particularly nostalgic, she’ll remind Lorian of when he was still small and kind enough that he would weep at the moths that slam themselves against the windows at night. 

Lothric carries none of that. Suffering is as much as a second skin to him as the robes that swamp him, but he bears it all with such an awful serenity that no child has any right to, always so damnably poised about everything that people hang off of his every word as if he was Gwyn himself. 

Lorian resigned himself to being his freakishly overgrown shadow. They’re simultaneously identical to the point of being twins and mismatched enough that they look like hideously warped reflections of each other. If Lorian cuts himself he grumbles about it like any other human being; Lothric is a butterfly crucified on a corkboard that flutters away with the same amount of grace it always had. 

(He heard this when he was born; that Lothric was almost human. Almost, in the way a snake wishes it was a dragon.)

Lorian thinks he loves Lothric because he is the only person he is wholly, utterly devoted to. He bows to his mother and father and calls that fealty. Devotion is a concept completely foreign to that. He rests at his feet like a chained hound and calls it his duty. Lothric lays under a tree on a tepid spring day and afterwards Lorian picks the bugs out of his hair with gloved hands. A pilgrim brings him an orange that he doesn’t have the strength to peel so Lorian does it for him, and cleaves the pieces for him to eat (Lothric hates the pith and gags when it gets caught on his tongue. Lorian picks it out with his nails and tosses it to the birds.) 

Devotion is an expectation. He’s expected to die for Lothric. His fate was presented pressing a stone sword against its own neck, left as a reminder like hanging garlands. If he isn’t with Lothric then he’s swinging a sword until his legs can’t support his weight and he has to pick himself up off the dust-covered stone floor of the training yard. Knighted not for glory, because Lothric wields glory clenched in abundance in pale hands, but for might. Lorian pictures himself as an overglorified stepping stone and finds a sour poetry when he has to prop Lothric up so he can stand.

Categorizing love and devotion into the same thing makes it easier. Blasphemy is when he keeps himself awake at night and fists his hands in the fabric of the blanket on his bed, thinking that it should’ve been him. Naming gives it form, and form allows him to seal it away under layers of dutiful veneer capped off with whatever Lothric wants him to be at that moment. 

Lorian loves Lothric because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself. Oceiros painted his expendability in broad enough strokes. If he tries to claw and scream at the arms constricting him then he’s nothing at all; a prince with no claim to a kingdom or a future for himself. Lorian plays royal babysitter or the king sends him off to fight and hopes to the gods he’ll die. There’s a certain irony to be had in the fact that his fate remains the same either way. 

Lothric cleaves a plum by the window. His nails cut through the skin with the same efficiency as the blade of a knife. The setting sun renders his silhouette unintelligible. Lorian cringes as he digs out the flesh with his fingers (just eat it for fuck’s sake, no need to be so pretentious about it) but he isn’t tugging at his cloak or hacking up blood, so he lets him be. 

In the silence he has the opportunity to work on his woodcarving. It occupies him enough that he doesn’t fidget mindlessly and drive everyone around him insane, and he likes that it keeps his fingers deft as well. The crow he’s working on is turning out decently enough. Later he can scrape the shavings off his lap and shuffle Lothric off to his lessons, and he’ll be able to do as he pleases. 

He briefly considers giving it to him as a present later, but then Lothric would just hold it in his freaky long fingers and look at it like it was a bug or a particularly fascinating illustration in a manuscript. He’d hardly be any better than the faceless pilgrim that brought him the plum he’s dissecting. Lorian pictures himself on the library table, innards spread like the pages of a book. Lothric looks at him the same way. Catches the blood on his fingers like the juice of the plum. Quirks his lips up and thanks him in that awful tone of his; child-soft yet as wizened as the most jaded of the knights. Lothric used to tug on his hair and try to eat it. Lorian is paralyzed over the thought of giving him a wooden bird. 

Cowardly elder prince, he thinks. The king is right (he always is, and why shouldn’t he be?) 

“The sun is setting” Lothric starts. Lorian can hardly see his lips move. 

“Obviously. That’s what happens in the evenings.”

“It’s far too early. Look,” he points, his arm an exaggerated arrow. “It’s touching the roof of the Grand Archives, though I just took my morning lessons. Last month it was nowhere near.” 

Lorian mentally squares his shoulders. Of course Lothric would go off on a tangent like this, so completely out of line that he gets the distinct impression that he’s speaking in code.

“And that matters why…?” 

“Do you not find it odd?”

Lorian sneers, hidden behind his hair. “No. I have far better things to do than stare at the sun all day, if you haven’t noticed by now.” 

Lothric slumps slightly, his cheek pressed against the window. “My tutor told me to pay attention to this. He said it was of the utmost importance.”

He finds the way Lothric speaks so bone-chillingly awful, dictating himself like one of the wax-covered scholars instead of a child. Almost human, he thinks. Almost.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it.” Lorian frowns and pauses his carving. “Who’s this tutor anyhow?”

He sometimes considers himself lucky that he’s exempt from curling up at Lothric’s feet during his lessons like his prized hunting hound. His presence would only be a nuisance (cowardly, unworthy prince! better to learn to swing a sword than learn the history of the kingdom he’ll never have.) An awful part of him that he smothers in his sleep begs and chips its nails on want, but Lothric’s drivel switches from asinine to antagonizing on a dime. Lorian will discard whatever envy that bubbles up in exchange for an hour without a splitting headache. 

Is that what this has come down to? Exchanges and equivalencies and whatever small niches he can claw in the throne made for his brother’s image?

“Sulyvahn” he says simply, as if that answers every question running through Lorian’s mind. 

“Oh yes, that helps. No Lothric, I don’t care about his name. Who is this tutor?” 

Lothric huffs. “A scholar from the Grand Archives. Father picked him personally. He’s not from the kingdom, but he knows a great deal.” 

“And does father know you’re spending your time stargazing?” 

“Does it matter? I can do as I please whether he knows or not.”

The bird loses a leg. Lorian’s knuckles are stiff against his carving knife. Lavender. Jasmine. Bouquets overflowing in abundance, picked by the king personally.

“Does he babble on about the moonlight too?”

“It hides many secrets, supposedly.”

The missing leg adds charm, he tells himself. He can make it work. “And I’m sure he’s driven himself half insane over the Dark Sun and whether she truly exists or not.”

“Mother would know.”

Lorian scoffs. “Fat chance. Getting her to talk about anything but Lord Gwyn is like pulling out teeth.” 

“Shame” he sighs, and falls silent.

Lorian scrapes at wood. He’s an ant under glass, struggling and burning as Lothric studies his humiliation with those awful golden eyes. He’s not cruel enough to be amused but he isn’t kind enough to put the glass aside out of a sense of mercy. 

(Though burning ants is a childish thing to do. Should he be relieved that Lothric acts his age?) 

“You do seem awfully interested in the scholar” he begins. Lorian internalizes a groan. 

“Am I not allowed to be? Is this topic out of reach for me, only for the most studied of academics?”

“Not at all” Lorian swears he’s smirking, that little shit. “I just find it odd.”

“That I’m feeling curious?”

“Well, you’re not exactly-”

Lorian stares, knife poised. 

“-a curious person…?”

“Mhm.” 

“Anyhow” he sits up, crossing his ankles. “I like him a great deal. He tells me all sorts of stories, you know.”

“I bet” Lorian turns the bird around. The beak is a bit wonky. He doesn’t feel like continuing on with it anyways. 

“He’s now telling me of Sir Artorias. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?”

This is exhausting. “Obviously. Do you think I was born with my head stuck up my ass?” 

“Nothing so vulgar. My point is that you could always join us if you’re feeling so curious. Father probably won’t mind.” 

Gaze upon the olive branch thrown by his eight-year-old brother! Beholden to no one and so damnably flippant about everything including their father and what he thinks and what he’ll do and I’m far too precious to so much as look at and I know it and I know how much your life is worth too! Glory be!

“In case you haven’t noticed, I'm not too much of an academic type” he says, voice set in a sharp line. 

“It won’t do for a poorly educated eldest prince” 

“What does it matter? I am not in line for anything, so it makes no difference whether I am a brute or a philosopher. I could be a hollow and the king would still not care.” 

He finds his reflection on the flat side of his carving knife, a pair of washed-out eyes staring back accusingly. He feels like screaming, but that would mark it down as a victory for Lothric. Every conversation with him is a game of chess with his hands bound, and all he does is skip ahead and taunt Lorian in that awfully jaded voice of his. 

He sets the knife aside instead. 

Lothric shrugs. “It would probably change some things. He would kill you, for one.” 

(Oceiros smiles like wine overflowing and smothers him in the dirt of his garden. Scratches lines on his arms when he cracks his head open against the basin he used to wash his hands and he wanted it, in a sense, which only makes him hate it and himself by extension all the more.) 

“Awfully morbid of you” he forces out. It sounds like someone doing a poor job at calling for birds. 

“I do hope you come anyhow. I’d enjoy the company.”

“Sure” Lorian nods, slow like sand. “I’ll consider it.”

He doesn’t, and he won’t. He picks at his knuckles at night and finds a fleeting sense of bewilderment when he refuses Lothric’s summons. Neither a cowering pet nor the specimen to pin down at the wrists and disembowel (for posterity, of course! father would say that he’s finally bringing some good to the kingdom.) 

He lingers, anyhow. 

The voice of his tutor is low and strangely melodious. He draws in broad strokes and scratches in the fine details with his nails after the fact. Lothric listens and hardly interrupts (practically a miracle in and of itself, considering Lorian never manages to get a word in edgewise.) 

The tutor is speaking of Seath the Scaleless. Lorian knows enough about him from his mother’s stories, an odd mix of distaste and nostalgia coating her words. A trusted advisor to Gwyn and a looming presence above the kingdom, cunning in his madness with no regard for any being but himself. Lorian imagined him as a leering thing over his shoulder when the moon was painted in full. 

“Why would he betray his own kind?” Lothric mumbles, shocking Lorian out of his daydreams. He pictures Lothric chewing at his nails as he listens, eyebrows tangled in thought. 

“No one is entirely certain” Sulyvahn muses, voice like a prowling snake. “Any motivations he once had have been lost to time.” 

Lorian can hear the shuffling of robes, steps against wood. “And what do you think?” 

“Perhaps he simply listened to nature” he says, and leaves Lorian to wonder.

Oceiros scars the dirt with a spade. Lorian watches him work, mindful of the distance separating them. He treats the small flower he tends to with something amounting to fondness. His hands are gentle as he tucks it into the soil. 

There’s a smear of dirt on his cheek. It makes him seem like a person. 

“It rained overnight, so it attracted the worms” he bobs with his head, blade-straight hair tucked behind his ears. “Lend me a hand, won’t you?”

Lorian crouches. Mud squelches at the toe of his boots. Entry to the gardens was a privilege Lorian was never afforded. Standing in the dirt feels almost sinful. Oceiros invites him in and all he can think is that he might take the opportunity to slit Lorian’s throat with a trowel and use what’s left as fertilizer. 

The flower is awfully pretty, at least. Very delicate. It reminds him of lace. 

“You have to bury the flower well or else it will never grow” he continues, uncaring of Lorian’s apprehension. “The worms and insects will nip at all the little things in the dirt and raise it along, you see. Almost like a kingdom of its own. I quite like it.”

Oceiros is saying something with this. Paranoia is a virtue carved into the bark of the surrounding pines. Lorian has to scrabble and dirty his nails to find whatever meaning he’s locked behind layers of metaphor and the serrated edge of his sneer. 

He reaches over for his shovel. “I’ve always had a fondness for gardening, though it wasn’t exactly an approved hobby for a prince. My father would rather see me practicing my sorcery or studying, but I would always find myself coming back to the little garden I had hidden away.” 

His voice turns dour. “Eventually, word must have gotten to the servants who in turn told of it to my father. I went to check on it one day with a basket of seeds I had bought from a merchant in one of the settlements only to find it burnt to the ground.”

Lorian furrows his eyebrows. “That’s horrible.” 

“Yes, it was. He never explicitly stated that it was by his order, but I can’t imagine that it would be done by anyone else. He always was a bit… strict.”

Lorian shifts his gaze downwards. Sympathy is a bitter thing at the back of his throat that he chokes down on. How ironic that Oceiros is the reason he’s feeling that at all. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? I have my own garden now, far bigger than I had ever dreamed of at the time. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“It’s saddening to hear, anyhow.” Lorian thinks of his carving tools thrown out the window, little wooden birds smashed to bits. 

“Well, think of it as a lesson. A prince ought to be well-rounded.” ( What for? He almost catches himself saying. More things to turn over in his mouth at night.) 

“I will” he nods instead. The fabric of his gloves pulls taught over his knuckles. 

Oceiros packs in what’s left of the soil around the stem. The flower sits prettily, petals moving in the cool breeze. He wonders if it has some use, sleeping aid or poison. Perhaps Lothric drinks it in his tea to soothe his throat. 

He doesn’t ask. 

“You’re to be knighted soon, are you not?” He starts suddenly. The change in subject is so sharp Lorian feels as though he’ll lose his balance. 

“I- yes. In three weeks time.” 

His lips stretch as he smiles, teeth white. “Aren’t you lucky. Most people would only hope to be a squire at your age.” 

Lucky. Hah. “It’s a great honour.” 

“Though” he puts a hand on Lorian’s shoulder. Dirt smears on black fabric. Lorian freezes, though the king doesn’t seem to notice. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“Well, I-” stop touching me stop touching me please for fuck’s sake stop

“You can tell me” he pouts sardonically. He wants to scream. “A son should confide in his father, no?”

“I suppose it’s just a…” not a bout of nerves, no, because then the king would flay him alive and lords does he wish he would keep his hands off. He swallows. “I am proud.”

“Eloquent as ever, I see” he snorts. 

“Truly, I am.” 

He’s close. Too close. He’s practically tugging him in by the collar, tilting him off-balance. Lorian smells the scent of the garden on him, peaty and pungent with an nondescript thread of rot laced through it all. 

“You’ll be on the front lines. Are you perhaps afraid?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course” his hand moves to his cheek. Lorian holds his breath, his field of vision narrowed to the hand grazing at the bottom of his periphery. If he moves his thumb an inch he could gouge out his eye. “Even if all you’ve done since I called you here is stutter and flinch and mumble like a child.”

“That-” get off get off get off get OFF “has nothing to do with my capability in battle.”

“Your brother is already far more well-spoken than you. Does that not bother you?”

It does. It makes him want to tear his hair out at the roots sometimes (his or Lothric’s, he’s not picky) and it makes him hate how easily the king can read him. “He’s more eloquent than half the knights as well.”

His lips quirk up. “That is true. And yet I still can’t help but worry.”

Was he just brought here to be antagonized? The moment Lorian leaves the king will drop any pretense of fatherly affection and go back to crossing his fingers that he might trip over a rock and impale himself on his sword. 

“There’s no need.”

“I have a hard time believing you” he leans in, breath cloying against his skin. Lorian stills like a hunted deer. “Listen, a prince, especially the eldest, has certain duties to fulfill.”

“I know that” he mutters, almost petulantly. Duties, as if the title was more than just an honorary platitude. Lorian is scraps of paper fed into a fire and a prince on a technicality.

Technicalities hiding in the bushes and in the rocks. Divinity on a technicality. His mother is a goddess but even her blood preferred Lothric more. 

“I would hope so. The kingdom depends on it. Your brother, especially.” 

He should stop being surprised at this point. “I’m no coward.” 

“I am glad to hear it” He pats his cheek twice, slow and agonizing. Lorian bites the inside of his mouth. “I would hate for you to be a disappointment.”

-though since lost, was an interesting case. It was less of the divine relic that it had been revered as and more functional in nature, though it was still forged by divinity. -- 

-remains to be seen what exactly functions as a replacement, and if there would ever be a true relic to succeed the Lordvessel. It can be hypothesized that other methods had been devised since the loss of the relic--  

Frustratingly enough, there is no one true pattern to the nature of the linking of the flame (though I suppose that is the nature of divinity in and of itself, to be inherently obtuse). The Archives, naturally, contain enough information on past linkings to be able to piece together accounts, though I still find myself unable to truly --

-Farron’s legion, for one, is a case study that is simultaneously fascinating and confusing. Previously recorded lords had been single entities, and yet nearly the entirety of the army was made a lord, so to speak. In fact--

--recognize one for the other--

-I would know more on this if I could. Though the Archives have a grand selection, it has become rather clear to me that it does not escape the long reach of the church. I may have to resort to other sources if I wish to continue my research (perhaps a pilgrimage to Anor Londo is overdue). In any case, I will extend my stay in the kingdom to see how this falls. The nature of a true scholar, I suppose.

Lothric curls up at the foot of his bed after the sun sets. All Lorian can see of him is a little blob with a shock of pale hair. Lothric wordlessly presents him with half a pomegranate, spilling over like a desiccated heart in his pale hands.

“Father isn’t being cruel to you, is he?”

There’s enough light from the moon that the seeds glitter dimly. Lorian holds a fistful of bloody rubies in his hand, and Lothric is hushed and quiet enough that he sounds almost genuinely concerned. That’s laughable. Lorian is the one who bandages Lothric’s knees if he collapses. Lothric claims mercy from the gods and dispenses it in scant pieces. Pomegranate seeds for poor, pitiful Lorian, kicked in the ribs and left to grit his teeth. 

It makes him want to bite down on the soft part in between his thumb and forefinger and scream.

Lothric leaves him no room to move. He doesn’t want to accept his offering because accepting would open himself up to whatever awful look Lothric is wearing on his face right now, and accepting would mean that he is right. The king praises Lothric, offhandedly, usually in the face of Lorian’s failures. Lothric is a crown jewel. Lorian has been trailing after the hem of his robes his entire life. Lorian is a convenient scapegoat that the king can practice his aim with. 

(Horribly, sometimes, he thinks- maybe Lothric will choke on his spit or collapse and crack his skull and then he too could-) 

“There’s nothing to worry about” He pops a seed into his mouth. The juice burns at the holes he tore into his left cheek that afternoon. “It won’t do any good for you, anyhow.”

And Lothric nods.

Gertrude hums as she paints and kicks her feet to the tune. The fluttering lace at the hem of her sleeve bears smears of burgundy at the edges. Lorian looks over her shoulder at the bleeding bruise smeared across the canvas, her auburn curls brushing against his jaw. 

“Good lords, what is that?”

She leans back, bare feet poised against the bar of her stool. “What do you suppose it is?”

“Why are you asking me? Aren’t you the one who painted it?”

“Mother said to ask for a second opinion.” 

 Yellow crested in pale creams spread out like wings in opposite directions. Indigo creeps diagonally across the canvas in watery smears. Lorian never liked that shade of blue. 

“Perhaps she didn’t like it either,” he says, distracted. 

Gertrude pouts. “Always so callous. I’ve given this a lot of thought, you know.” 

“Have you? I can’t tell what it is for the life of me.” 

“Feathers” she swings her legs. “Bunches and bunches of feathers. Lothric sheds them like leaves.” 

And Lorian is the one who plucks them from his limbs. He never knows what to do with the disgusting things so he leaves them on the windowsill and hopes that the birds will steal them away. Lothric complained about the whole debacle once, said it was like Lorian was tugging hairs out of his head one by one. 

Lorian pushes his head down to shut him up and grumbles that he didn’t ask for this either. Lothric melts over the bed in cobalt blue, head shadowed in swathes of navy. Gertrude uses royal shades. Plucks beetles straight from the king’s garden and melts it into a set of violet knives. 

“Would you bring one for me?” she continues. “I would so love to draw it.” 

“Get one yourself” he grumbles. He’s being squeamish. He doesn’t particularly care. 

“Sullen Lorry,” (and lords above does that nickname make him gag) “Lothric isn’t too fond of me. Won’t let me near him. Talk to him for me, won’t you?” 

“I’m not the one giving him orders.”

Sometimes he wonders if he should feel more of a kinship with Gertrude. Excess finds itself in the same pile when it’s swept off the table. Lothric is embroidery done in gold thread, scissors reap the rest. He had expectations as the eldest prince. Had, past tense. Has; Lothric tugs him around like a corpse on a rope. They keep nutcrackers in the kitchen for when the walnuts fall off the trees, purely utility. Gertrude, on the other hand, was the third child in a family no longer wanting for heirs. Overflow, still, but not entirely unwanted. Mother seems to like her.

He supposes he’s glad. 

“Try for me anyhow,” she says, and smears yellow in the shape of a crown.

Lothric’s sword lays dead on red fabric. Emma approaches from his shoulder, half like a mother watching her child take its first steps and mostly like the wyvern that has a habit of sunning itself on the bridge. Lothric’s nails scrape against the velvet, marking thin parallel lines. 

The queen looms to the left, looking bored. Gertrude rocks on her feet. The king is to his right. Lothric, caged in by their ragged semicircle like the spoils of a hunt, moves the sword an inch with a massive amount of effort. Lorian props him up on the days when his legs can’t support his weight. He already knows the outcome of this. Will Emma declare him to be his sword as well? (on a technicality, of course. Lorian is the sword that slays the beast but Lothric is the victor.) 

Lothric, humiliated by their impatient stares as he struggles to heave a boulder up a hill. Lorian, cloistered by the jeers of the knights as blood sprayed onto the ragged cobblestone of the dragon barracks. Oceiros stifles a yawn behind long fingers. This is purely ceremony. No one actually expects Lothric to wield the damn thing. Emma just wanted a knight to dress up, something closer in resemblance to a lord of cinder and not the boy struggling to draw a sword from its scabbard. Something to fill out the stature the throne demands. Lorian is sixteen and already half a foot taller than his father. Lorian-

“Come on then,” Emma says, chiding. “This was made for you.”

( Your birthright! Oceiros howls, all teeth and tongue. You were made for this! ) 

He jumps slightly as the sword clatters to the ground, the blade naked and shining. Lothric twists, arm pinned under the grip. Lorian steps forward instinctively, halfway to dragging Lothric up and held back by ritual and the force of the priestess’ glare. Oceiros stares at the back of his neck. Lothric is limp as he drags him up by the wrist and keeps his head hung low under the covering of blue fabric. 

The sword is perfectly weighted, gleaming like sunlight. Lorian gazes at the gold embellishments travelling down the spine of the blade and finds his reflection in the polished steel. Lorian knows well enough that he has no eye for art, but the excessive nature of the swirling gold marks ceremony over function in bold strokes. 

How fitting. Lothric is dolled up in all the jewelry they could find in the castle and they give him a crown more elaborate than the king’s. Emma claims ceremony when she lets out the seams of his robes each year. Sacred rites for the embroidery Lothric ruins with his nails. Made for excess, but not in excess. Lorian wonders if they can salvage the jewelry after he burns. 

( it’s all gold , something counters in the pragmatic part of his mind. there still has to be a gem or two to keep. use them to keep his eyes closed in the grave. unlike Lothric, Lorian will be lucky enough to have a body to bury.)

Emma snatches the blade from him and curls it away like a child, glaring. Lorian always finds himself surprised at how jumpy she can be. His fingers ache. 

“How audacious of you.”

(though how they choose to dispose of it is out of his control)

“Should I have left him on the floor?” Lorian scowls. 

“He does not need you to pick himself up.” 

Lothric is a limp kitten held by the scruff and is only standing because Lorian is supporting his weight. If he lets go he’ll crumple to the ground in a heap of blue. Gertrude peers out from the queen’s hip and ogles Lothric with wide eyes. 

“He could barely lift the sword. Do you think he can stand right now?” He nudges Lothric. “Come on then. Prove me wrong.” 

“Do not treat your lord as a prop.”

Ceremony when Emma picks him up and parades him like he’s her son. Lorian puts him on his feet and runs the risk of crumbling his sanctity into nothingness, as if Lothric is a virgin maiden. 

Lorian sneers. “You can take him if you-”

“Come now, Emma.” Oceiros swoops in, placating. “Lorian is just a tad bit overprotective. It’s hardly fair to blame him for that.” 

Lorian stills. Oceiros was never the type to interfere between Lorian and whatever hard wall he found himself up against. On any other occasion he would be more than happy to watch the priestess tear him to shreds.

He looks over and tosses his head. “Go on, then. Take your brother away.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

Lothric remains silent and keeps his head down. Lorian bandages his knuckles in lieu of running off for a cleric. Later he’ll have to go and file his nails down with a rasp (and what is he, a maid? Should he trim his hair next?) 

Lothric says nothing, quiet and tucked in on himself like a properly scolded child. Distantly, Lorian chews on the sense of satisfaction he found when the blade dropped out of his hand. A good knight would be humiliated on behalf of his lord. Attempting to summon up the appropriate response yielded nothing but frustration directed at himself. 

He can wield a sword at the very least. Lorian smiled, silent and private, and kept it all to himself. 

-another method was devised (Fig. 1), seemingly exclusive to the kingdom. The youngest prince was questioned for a firsthand account, though he claimed he had yet to see it in use. It is entirely likely that--

-a conduit serving the exact function as the Lordvessel (Fig. 2) itself, more of a measurement device, or perhaps a scale. So long as the requirements were met, the--

-worrisome for the family if the child could not fulfill said requirements, and thus would have to rely upon another method. It would not be unheard of, though in all the accounts an exact replica of the situation has yet to be found. The receptacle is, in the end, nothing more than a mere object. Foul play is not necessarily out of the question, and certainly not out of the capabilities of the royal family. 

Lorian pokes at the embers in the hearth with something amounting to disinterest. Lothric peers over his shoulder and watches the red-hot tip of the poker tangle at the loop of a thin gold chain. Lorian doesn’t acknowledge his presence, but doesn’t seem bothered either. Lothric takes the invitation and sits. 

The carpet is pleasantly warm. If he had his way he would stretch out fully to combat his perpetual chill, but Lorian would scold him for propriety (as if he doesn’t have a habit of propping his boots up on the table when he carves.)

“How long do you suppose it takes gold to melt?” he says. Lothric furrows his brows. 

“Isn’t that mine?”

“You’re not going to miss it, are you?”

“No” he frowns. “You’d need a proper fire for anything to happen though.”

Lorian’s lips quirk up at the edges. It is not a smile. Lothric only needs one hand to be able to count how many times Lorian has ever truly smiled. “More’s the pity.”

Lorian stirs the fire. Lothric watches the sparks that dart up like flies. It isn’t like Lorian to have an interest in conducting his own little experiments like this. He embodies pragmatism in every word, and Lothric is the one that likes to blow feathers into the air to see how far they’ll sail.

He remembers this; He was eight and still stupid like children are, climbing up over the rail to leer at the pilgrims below. Lorian was fourteen and about as much of a morose bastard as he is now, tugging at his hood like it was the scruff of a kitten’s neck and pulling him back to solid ground. 

He still feels stupid, sometimes. Overwhelmingly lost and confused and dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the weight of the jewelry that hangs off his shoulders. Sulyvahn scribbles his notes in a mad cipher and swiftly closes his notebook when Lothric is near. He’s taken bits and pieces and written parts of the alphabet in the margins of his notes, but if he tries to untangle it he just ends up feeling that same unbearable pressure close in over his head. 

(The ocean or the kiln. Lothric has to decide young whether he should drown first or burn like he’s supposed to.) 

“Do you have a ring you don’t like?” Lorian asks. “Preferably something with a jewel in it.”

“I’m starting to think that you’re just jealous.” 

Lorian snorts. “Hardly.” 

“Is there a girl you fancy or something? Perhaps one of mother’s fetching young maidens?”

Lorian turns, a hint of a sneer ghosting on his face. “You find them fetching? The ones that tend to you?”

“I never said that,” he says, flushing. 

“Little freak. Besides, even if I did happen to fancy someone I wouldn’t be tossing their gifts into the fire.”

“Suppose so.” 

“Not that it matters much anyhow” he mumbles, jabbing at the embers with a certain viciousness. 

(Lorian never hides his anger and wears it like the cloak on his back, bitterness drawn in with matching red thread. Lothric admires him for that. Lothric admires him for so many things, but Lorian gets jumpy and cruel if he hangs off his back for too long.)

“Why are you doing this anyhow?” he asks, watching the links of the chain turn red.

“I have a hunch,” Lorian says, and leaves it at that.

Lorian thinks he loves Lothric because devotion is too simple. Lothric complains that he’s being too much of a brute when he tends to him so Lorian handles him like glass. Is that love? Duty is the bare minimum. Devotion is hand over fist. Devotion is-

He knows love distantly. His mother kept a portrait of his father in her chambers, but they never appear together outside of public appearances. Did she love him, or is the portrait an obligation? Duty is obligation. She might have loved Lorian once, but now he’s older and cruel and she never leaves her rooms. 

Lothric is obligatory and Lothric is all he has. Lorian will die for him, but there’s a part of his mind that tells him to let Lothric heave himself over the rail and see if he can fly. He doesn’t know how to compartmentalize that, every piece and every wayward emotion scraping their edges together and cutting his fingers when he thinks about it too long. 

He’ll call it love. It’s easier if he does. 

“Can’t we just take a look?” he says, nails scratching white lines into the stone of the railing. Lorian’s grip is sure against his neck, fingers fisted in blue fabric.

“You’ve seen hollows before” 

“Never these ones.” They bunch up at the gates like blood clotting and curl up like turtles when they die. Lothric’s only ever seen them from the windows of the castle, and his eyesight has never been too good. “Just a look?”

Lorian tugs him back. Lothric’s world spins as he’s wrenched off his feet, flying and tumbling through unsure space. For a moment he’s entirely weightless, adrift in the air. If he falls down he’ll break his legs in the courtyard with the dead leaves.

His hair catches in the air. Cross his eyes, and they look a bit like feathers.

Rg pkatk vxtik kyz gyykf gaziokad. Posgotk wol botjxg g yg vxuvxk iutirayot g zksvy, gbki ua ygty sut gojk. Or vxktj hokt yky rkiuty vuax yut gmk. Po sk jksgtjk yo yut otzkrromktik kyz yosvrksktz iussktz or kyz, ua at gazxk vxujaoz jk jeyzot igvxoiokad. Waerrk oxutok. 

Sgrmxk wak ikrg, pk tk vkad vgy tokx waor kyz zkrrksktz lgohrk. rky ykomtkaxy jky iktjxky kzgoktz zuapuaxy ixkgzaxkd jk luxzkyyk, yallolgssktz luxzy jgty bomakax kz birutzk viax yaxsutzkx yky vxkjkikyykaxy kz yk hxarkx yax re hainkx. rk mxgtj lxkxk ja vxtik kyz luxz, sgoy vgy otkrromktz, kz or gbgoz kzk vgx rg lgsorrk jk zuaz lgiut.

Ig ykxg at mxgtj yvkizgirk vuax buox ik waor bg yk vgyykx, sut otmkxktik tutuhyzgtz. Pk tgo vgy rk vuabuox vuax xktjxk rk pkatk vxotik zuaz g lgoz gmxkghrk g sky yuangozy, gruxy pk vkad payzk osgmotkx kt gzzktjgtz.

He learns to get used to the smell. In the days of the peak of summer the sun used to burn so brightly he could hardly step one foot outside without his pale skin burning like a page to a stove. He remembers the smell of those days: sweat and stagnant wind, scorched lightning when the clouds grew dark. A tree in the courtyard caught fire after being struck and he remembers that too, the smoke and the ash and the hiss of flame being put out when the squalls came. When he prods the hearth with a poker the embers fall like stones. 

His company piled up the bodies in one of the few quiet corners of Farron and moved on, leaving the mess smoking like a pile of cured meat. Later they all took turns hacking at the corpse of the demon they fell and discovered nothing but magma and twisting roots. Lorian finds himself unnerved. 

He knows his company less by name and more by traits that he’s filed away into separate shelves. Sorting makes it easier. If he can fold everything down into miniscule pieces then the less time he has to spend figuring them out (Gertrude showed him how to fold flowers out of squares of paper she tore from old books, but no matter how delicate he was he only ever ended up squashing them.) 

There’s the thirty-something woman who keeps a flask at her belt and gestures wildly when she talks. The man who fiddles with the straps of his armour who seems to prefer hiding under his shield over anything else. The gravel-voiced veteran with a fear of thunder. The squire, only two years younger than him, with a baby sister who’s the only thing he ever talks about-

“Heard the demons had a king” 32 says.

“Bullshit.”

“Really.”

“Where did you hear that?” Coward says, snorting. “Down at the taverns?”

32 scowls.”What, the one where all the scholars go? Fat chance. It’s common knowledge.”

“Hardly,” Gravelly 48 pipes up. “You’re just deflectin’ cause you don’t wanna admit you’re makin’ shit up.” 

Lothric would probably know, judging off of all of the other knowledge he’s privy to. Lorian will not ask. 

The squire (Hector, his mind supplies, unhelpful and entirely unwanted) leans in. “I heard it too. He’s as old as Izalith itself.” 

32 raises her flask. “See? Kid’s on my side.”

“I didn’t even know they had a hierarchy” groans Cowardly mid-thirties. 

Hect- Squire, sixteen crosses his arms. “I didn’t even think demons themselves existed until one came in and destroyed half the settlement. It took us a year to repair the roads.” 

The company falls silent. Lorian vaguely remembers hearing of the incident, or rather his father almost seeming concerned for the first time in Lorian’s memory. Demons were an absurdity five years ago. Demons were a race doomed to extinction, like humanity’s distorted mirror image. Lorian bit into the flank of one with his greatsword and the spray splattered onto his vambraces and pressed the armour into his skin like a hot iron. He peeled the singed fabric of his tunic away afterwards and found nothing but a field of blistered red flesh and exposed tissue that turned his stomach. 

(Five years ago. Hector, eleven, hauling shrapnel off to be burned in piles later and- for fuck’s sake stop thinking about it what is your problem Lorian you idiot-)  

“Bet you 30 piece they have a prince” 48 smirks, the scar on her cheek stretching. 

“Nobody’s paying that for a bet you old bastard.” 

(Hector’s set to be knighted in the fall. Hector, sixteen, who ties his hair back in a pink ribbon and gods his sister is all he has isn’t she?)

“I’ll toss on an extra twenty if he has a brother as well” Lorian says-

(is that love?)

And they all laugh. 

Lorian leaves on campaign and Lothric finds himself devoid of function. Lorian’s presence was a constant that settled on his shoulder like a bird. Missing that, now Lothric is weightless and free to do as he pleases (to an extent, Emma and Sulyvahn and his father notwithstanding, though they aren’t the same and can never, ever be the same.) Lorian is not there to nag at him or sneer when Lothric says something silly. Lorian was the royal babysitter and Lothric is- 

He doesn’t know. What can he do? He’s afraid to crawl out of bed in fear that he will suddenly collapse and no one will pick him up to his feet and bring him back. Only now does he realize how much he’s come to rely on Lorian as a crutch. Only now does he realize how much he hates it, and hates himself for it by extension. Does he only love Lorian in substitute for his own weakness? Lothric finds strength in his legs one day and casts him into obscurity like the rest of their family. Takes up his sword with little humiliation and puts him out of his misery like an injured hunting hound. Calls it a mercy.

It scares him. 

Gertrude brings him books in the evening with the pages covered in scribbles. She sits and chats and tries to show him how to fold flowers out of the pages of books that the scholars had been looking for since a few months back. 

“I don’t see how you can be so precise about this” he grumbles, poking in a corner with his nail. “I’d just fall asleep if you weren’t smacking me awake.”

Gertrude frowns. “At least you’re doing it properly. Lorian just tore everything he tried, that awful brute.” 

He lets her take a feather later for trying her patience. She’s the closest replica to kindness in the family. Kind in the way their mother is supposed to be, but niceties and cruelty have a tendency to form a handshake. He wonders if their mother was like this in her youth. How strange it is to think of a god being a child at some point. It’s a little too humanizing for his tastes. 

(He asked Lorian once if she ever told him about her sisters, mostly to find out if the Dark Sun was real so he could go and rub it in Sulyvahn’s face but then Lorian just threw his hands up in exasperation and went ’ Good gods! All she ever does is talk about Gwyn. If I end up praising our father so incessantly I expect you to kill me.’ )

She leaves the books. 

Lothric experiments in the next few days. He doesn’t want to stoop for a chime so he lets the magic burn his fingers and turn them black. Gertrude’s strange doodle of a man with wings moves from his lap to the end of his bed and he passes out and awakes with the morning sun turning his vision white. The little flowers are next, piled up in the corner. Three feathers. One of his bracelets lands on the heap with a clatter. 

He moves himself. Emma doesn’t leave his side for the next week. A small price to pay, he supposes. He wonders if liberation is burning heat under the beds of his nails. 

A month goes by. Lothric decodes sorceries from Sulyvahn’s strange writings and topples a statue of a wax-covered scholar with an arrow of light. He’s pleased, even as the tips of his fingers buzz and tingle like a hive of wasps. His sword can lay quiet for all he cares, bundled in fabric and gathering layers of dust until the engravings are impossible to make out. 

Lorian would call it a shame. Lothric looked up at him, half-obscured by the blue shadow of his hood when he was hauled up by the arm. Lorian seemed poised, almost holy in the low afternoon light, his tightly braided hair shining like a strip of silk against the red hues of his cloak. Lothric saw him in the mirror of the blade, something like longing reflected down where he could see it. 

(He prefers his greatsword now. Nothing ever came of it in the end. Lothric is almost disappointed.) 

Lothric knows it will happen like this; The journey to Firelink Shrine will be less of a pilgrimage and more of a funeral procession. The king and queen will be at the head and behind them will be Lorian, clad in his brass armour, and Lothric will be in the middle in his crown and veil, surrounded on all sides by the knights and the weight of circumstance. If he can’t walk Lorian will probably end up half-dragging him and they’ll all look away and pretend that it isn’t a great shame. 

How cruel that he has to carry him and then die for him. There’s a scant few minutes between Lorian’s fate-mandated suicide and Lothric’s own; agony both miniscule and infinite between the two points of Lothric’s world ending. Gertrude will look away and bury her face in their mother’s skirt. He doesn’t want to watch either, but Lorian would get all huffy that Lothric doesn’t have the decency nor the guts to watch the personal beheading on his behalf. 

Lothric doesn’t want to watch. Lothric does not want any of it to happen at all. Lothric doesn’t-

Ocelotte is born in the mid-winter. No one is allowed to see him. Emma, pale-faced, shoos Lothric away from the chambers when he lurks around too long like a particularly audacious cat, so he returns to where he left Lorian so he can lay down and sulk. 

Lorian whittles the snout of a wolf in short strokes. His right hand is heavily bandaged and grasps the block of wood awkwardly, as if the last three fingers were nothing but dead weight. When Lorian truly concentrates on something precise he has a tendency to stick his tongue out slightly, which Lothric finds incredibly amusing. 

“Did mother ever tell you of Sir Artorias?”

“She did.”

“Well?” Lothric nudges him with his foot.

“It’s the same as how you heard it. He rode to Oolacile to save the young princess and vanquish the Father of the Abyss, but lost his life in the end.” 

It’s not how Lothric heard it, but Sulyvahn is a secretive man and his lessons are stark and beginning to border on blasphemy. Lothric beholds himself to no one, but he knows that he owes Sulyvahn a great deal and keeps his mouth shut. 

Lorian pauses his carving and smiles, ever so slightly. It feels like a flower blooming. “Mother also said he loved to recite poetry. He had a wonderful voice but an awful memory, and so would end up forgetting his verses halfway through and would be forced to make something up on the fly. ” 

“I always did like hearing of his wolf.”

Lorian’s hand twitches and he scowls, rolling his wrist before taking up his knife again. “Do you think he knew?” 

“What?”

“That he was going to die.”

Sulyvahn’s tale went as such; It was a strategic sacrifice on the part of the gods so to stamp out the burgeoning remains of the dark soul. Whether Sir Artorias rode willingly to his death was never considered, and so was never recorded. 

Speculation, Sulyvahn said, is an underutilized tool. I can tell that you’re smart enough to put things together. 

“They keep the Abyss at bay in Farron, but you can still feel it underneath you, as if it’s completely inescapable.” His voice darkens. Lothric finds himself drawn in. 

Lorian continues. “Father calls me a coward. I am not afraid to die. How can I be? I’ve had my whole life to come to terms with it, and yet...” He shakes his head. “Still, I have doubts. He doubts me as well.” 

Lothric knows. Lothric is only scared of the king because the king is the only thing that Lorian is scared of. Lothric watched once, through the crack of the door of the king’s study, after Lorian returned from some skirmish. Lorian stood a full foot taller than the king. Lorian was a hunted deer. He’s never said anything outright, but Lothric is smart enough to stitch things together. 

“Artorias was a good knight,” Lothric says instead.

“Yes. He was.” He shakes his head. “And I am not. I should be glad to give my life for my lord. A good knight would be content with the purpose given to him, and yet I am nothing but angry with what has been handed to me. I do not want to fight the demon prince simply so my blood will be more satisfactory. It is all conquest for such a pointless sake.” 

(Lorian begins to border on blasphemy as well. Lorian tugs him down so he does not fall and catches him before he lands on the cold floor. He is not a good knight, but Lothric is beginning to think that he hates them anyhow.)

“Tell me, Lothric, am I a failure?”

Lothric smiles, hidden under his hair. “If you are, then I am as well.”

--watches him lean over the rail and he does love him (gwyn strike him down if he ever forsakes him) but he lets him tumble over and stands rooted in place, because hatred and love are not wholly antonyms and he can pitch himself after him afterwards in the end-

He calls for a duel. It is the honourable thing to do, after all. If he’s slaying the creature as mere fodder then he may as well offer it the dignity he will never be owed. One prince pitted against the other. Is this his father’s sense of humour at play? (Fodder for fodder. Lines of cattle led into the dragon barracks during feeding days.) 

Later it will be a mirror image of the beginning of his killing spree. His face, dull and pale and indifferent, distorted in the water as he soaks his burns. He towers over his father, but he’ll still be there to lick the blood off of him. He’ll be allowed to lay low and quiet like a blind dog afterwards, forced to be content with the sum he’s been allowed. 

It’s an honour, he said, smiling like the split sides of a plum. I imagine your grandfather would be proud. 

Every one of Gwyn’s recorded triumphs were epic clashes. Lorian is reminded acutely of hammering at a straw dummy with the wooden sword he was given when he was six. Divine strength can only carry him far enough. The effort to swing his greatsword reminds him well of his humanity, the burn on his hand screaming against the chafing of his armour. 

He wonders if the prince has a brother. 

“My little champion” the king croons, hand flat against singed hair. “You’ve done well.” 

He has to bend down. He hates that he does so willingly. He hates that he still leans into his touch even though he’s nearing mid-twenty and far beyond things like his father’s approval. He’s thirteen again and too stiff after his first battle to move properly. The king washes his hands and has him hoping, fleetingly, that he’ll have his brief love again even while he bites into himself to keep from flinching away. He’s a cowing hound. Him or Lothric; in the end it was always the same endless perusal of reciprocity that was so easily tossed around. 

What a grand champion he is! How foolish of him to so much as wish that his name would be remembered when he goes about acting like a lost child. He wanted this. 

The king’s hand is gentle. 

The sun sets far too early. Lothric has to make his decision sooner than he thought. He’s curled up on Lorian’s bed again, like he used to when he was a child and found it entertaining to annoy his brother while he tore the splinters out of his palms with his teeth. He feels less childish now, more or less like a wooden doll with its limbs propped up awkwardly. Lorian, on his part, allows him to lay silently. 

Lothric can count off the days he has left. Lothric can tally them on his arms in sharp points whittled by his nails. He feels a choking sense of finality, coalescing in his gut and setting him all strung-up, as flighty as an overtuned bow. He finds the same fleeting sense of anxiety when he watches the sun dip below the mountains, or the backs of the knights when they go out on campaign. 

All he ever does is watch. 

“Do you remember a knighting ceremony, about a few years or so ago?” Lorian starts, voice low and uncharacteristically subdued. Lothric always found it strange how a person of such imposing stature could be so soft-spoken.

“Of course I don't,” he says into the darkness.

“Of course” he echoes. “He was a squire in my company for a while. Afterwards he got moved to someone else’s command.” 

“And this matters why…?” 

“I find myself thinking of him often. He was unremarkable in battle and not too much of a sound mind either, and yet-”

“-sounds like someone’s infatuated-”

“Prick” Lorian kicks him. “I can hardly recall his name, thinking back, but I still remember that all he would ever talk about was his younger sister, like she was the only thing in the world.” 

Lothric holds his breath. In the light of the window Lorian’s hair is a ghastly white, framing his face like a burial shroud. He’s never been a sentimental type. Lothric pictures innards on the flat stretch of blanket between them, spread out like fruit. Later they can toss it to the crows and Lothric can continue his count in a show of dreadful repetition. 

“She must have been. He loved her so much he would have run to the ends of the earth for her.” 

“And would she have waited for him to run back?” 

“How would I know?” Lorian hunches over, his face entirely hidden. Lothric decides that he hates seeing him like this; open and weak and conflicted. Lothric is, for once, the stronger one of the two and he wishes so horribly for the stoic brother he once had that it all feels like agony settling beneath his ribs. 

“She must have” 

(if she was all he had, then the same must’ve been true the other way around, hadn’t it?)

And so he decides this too: 

Oceiros sits poised in the garden and hacks at the weeds surrounding the base of a flower. Lorian kneels to his left and lets the mud soak into the knees of his trousers. It rained recently enough that neither of them cast a shadow, everything blurring into a dull, blue-ish hue in the darkness of the clouds. 

Last he was in the gardens his father had him walking on thin lines. The summons had no justification that accompanied them. Lorian’s purpose is fulfilled and Oceiros has nothing more to bandy his threats about. What did they speak about last time? Insects? The capricious nature of the king hangs over Lorian’s neck like an overfull glass. The topic may very well be about the different trees in the garden as it may be about how to get the best angle when slicing his own throat open. 

“You’ve heard of the saints of Carim, haven’t you?” 

“No, I haven’t.”

“Of course not. Silly me.” Oceiros frowns at a bug crawling on the jagged leaf in his hand before picking it up and sending it aside. “They’re all blind, and revered for it too. The tomes are printed in braille so they are able to tell the stories.” 

He continues. “Some even gouge out their own eyes so to pursue the vocation. I can hardly imagine being drawn to priesthood in the first place, let alone mutilating myself for it.” He pauses. “Emma isn’t all too fond of me, so I would prefer if you kept that to yourself.”

Lorian has no idea why his father would be confiding anything in him, given that he thinks Lorian is about as sharp as a wooden spoon, but he bows his head. “If you wish.” 

“Good. Anyhow, what was I saying?” 

“The saints.”

“Yes- the saints. I never quite understood the point of only appointing the blind, other than to give them a place so they wouldn’t clog up the streets. Pass the trowel, would you?” 

Lorian abides. Oceiros’ fingers close strong around his wrist for a brief moment before taking the tool in hand. Lorian is unbalanced by the contact. He almost- no. Oceiros leers like he’s keeping something aside, but everything he says has always been shrouded like a fruit kept just out of Lorian’s reach. 

“It was explained to me later on. The saints are still human, you see, and to be human is to invite darkness. Those who cannot see the darkness are considered to be the only ones who could truly channel the miracles of their stories. I believe they blind the firekeepers for similar reasons.”

Lorian frowns. Oceiros inches closer, poised like an arrow. The weeds lay in a forgotten pile. “And the ones who do it willingly?”

“To draw away from the dark is to be closer to the divine.” 

“I don’t-”

The movement registers late. The trowel scrapes his cheekbone and leaves a burning path down the side of his face. He doesn’t-can’t- he won’t scream. Oceiros holds his scalp like a chain in his fist. The trowel is a hot poker. Move up his thumb and - gods - put down the old hunting dog with the broken leg because it doesn’t have anything left anymore. Fingers tear in his hair that keeps him upright and the king has no mercy left in him to be quick about moving to his other side. Lorian is a dead weight held in the air in calloused hands that still have dirt on them from when he was pulling up weeds-

The king lets him curl up and scream into his knuckles when he’s done with him, gore leaking out over the ground like twin streams of tears. Posterity, he thinks, vaguely, somewhere in the back of his mind. Too human- this was a fate he was not meant to see. 

“There now,” he hears, horribly and distantly. Sound without sight is an empty, infinite void. All there is to have for him now is dark- is this divinity? The king got it wrong. They all had it so wrong- he should tell Lothric and he would be so surprised, and for once he would have been the one to know something-

The king leaves him in the garden until nightfall, and he can only tell from the chill that settles in against his spine and on his neck. The guards come then, and bandage his eyes and take him away.

Firelink casts itself in shadow. Lothric is led in place. Their family is a ragged semicircle. He doesn’t want to know the faces of the king and queen so he shrinks himself until the swathes of his hood cover everything but the basin, hefted by two pallbearing knights. Fitting, he thinks. A basin to drown himself in. Drowning or fire. Drowning or flying. 

Lorian’s hand, solid against his wrist when he pulls him down. Lorian, led blindfolded and complacent, hair hanging low over his face like a veil. Lothric found him sitting by the window the night before, tracing his fingers listlessly over a wood carving of a crow.

He could still feel the light against his face, he said, for whatever it was worth. Soon he won’t even have that, and Lothric will only have the flame to see. Two paths to diverge, wholly and utterly opposite. Lothric-

The firekeeper’s words pass around him. He does not want to listen to her, and he does not want to see her. If he curls in on himself then he does not have to contend with this, and he does not care if he looks pathetic. Lordship be damned. All of this, be damned. 

Ceremony be damned. Lorian, knelt like a hooded prisoner and fumbling for his chopping block. Barely a quarter the way through his neck and there’s enough blood that Lothric could submerge himself. Lothric wants to lunge forward and push him away from his sword, spit in the face of their family for killing them both, spit in the face of the gods while he’s at it.

(Gertrude buries her face in the queen’s skirt and sobs. If he looked up a bit he would see the queen closing her eyes in a grimace, but he doesn’t and only sees his knuckles, clenched white) 

Lothric draws blood from his arms in thin exacting lines. He can’t move. He’s rooted to the spot, betrayed by himself. Time moves in slow, crawling drops. He made his decision. He made it long ago. He made it that night, when Lorian was all hushed and sentimental. He never made his decision- did he ever have the choice? 

Did either of them? 

If he reaches a little further he can-

The sun casts his shadow backwards, refracting and turning his skin ebony-white as he reaches out, pressing against the railing. If he reaches a little further he thinks- he can probably reach-

The rail slips out from under him. Lothric tastes a brief moment in dead space, calm and silent. He can’t feel anything, not the weight of his jewelry or the scratching of cloth against his skin. Taken in by gentle hands and drifting away in the wind. There are the knights below, little silver and red specks about the size of his nail bed. The pilgrims, bunched up by the gates and swinging their staffs. Leaves and feathers, drifting in and out like odd, mismatched twins-

Lorian’s fist is a solid thing that snatches him out of weightless air. Lothric skins his hands as he lands on stone, groaning and rubbing at his sore palms. Lorian towers over him, a silhouette that cloaks Lothric in its shadow.

“You idiot! What was the point of that?” Lorian yells. Lothric could bet his crown that he’s scowling. It’s all he ever does. 

“I was trying to catch a feather” he pouts, a bit petulant.

“And tried to pitch yourself over the rail?”

“I could’ve reached it.” 

“Good gods, Lothric…” Lorian groans, crouching and fisting his hands in his hair. He looks properly distressed for once, and Lothric doesn’t know what to do with that. “What would’ve happened if you fell?” 

( What would’ve happened to me? Is the unspoken line, but Lothric knows that Lorian is good at closing things off and keeps them behind his teeth.)

“I knew you would catch me,” he says, and Lothric-

-makes his decision.

******* shivers and pulls his robes closer against his skin. ******* chose his place where there was no fire, so he has no choice other than that if he wants to warm himself. It would’ve been something resembling winter if nature remained on its course. ******* used to love watching the snow. ******* always had a silent fantasy of visiting Irithyll. Irithyll is most likely dust at this point. He wouldn’t know. Time passes away from them as if they were submerged in a watertight box, silent and heavy, drifting to the bottom of the sea.

****** scrapes against the ground. He knows, from sound alone, that ******* is somewhere off of the floor (and he finds himself glad for it. It would do no good for his health to spend his days on cold brick- not that his health would improve otherwise.) ****** cannot call out to him anymore. ****** thinks back on the days when ******* would creep into his room, silently. It annoyed him horribly, but he learned to entertain his conversation and later, ****** would answer back in kind.

******* healed his throat well enough that he finds no marks if he feels his skin, but the most sound he can make is at most a groan. Fitting for the watchdog. The king would have gotten some twisted amusement out of this, he’s sure. ****** cannot recall his face. ****** cannot recall ******'s face either. 

******* picks at a feather stubbornly clinging to the skin of his elbow. The rest he leaves on the ground. It hurt when ****** did it, like he was poking him with a pin. It was probably something he would’ve done, ******* thinks with some amusement. ****** didn’t love him then.

******* looks out the window. He can see the spires of the Grand Archives, and then the High Wall beyond. Bridges and towers mark dark silhouettes against the red sky.

The sun is setting sooner than it used to.