Nobody asked, but here’s a snippet from an Elden Ring fic that I’ve been working on.
On one of their return visits to Leyndell, an idea occurred to Vyke.
The dragons were the first Elden Lords. It’s their power that governed this world at its inception. Perhaps the Order has forgotten their absence. Tendrils of electricity crackled at the spear tip, as he stood before the thorns. Let us reacquaint them.
Only later, as Vyke perched on the dais steps, a searing pain climbing up his arm, did he have his answer.
“Witless, insolent martyr,” Morgott hissed. There was a familiar comfort in the litany of insults muttered under his breath, in between snippets of incantation. “Bereft of anything approximating sense. What madness compelled thee?”
“A theory,” Vyke said, because desperation didn’t capture the same air of scholarly rigor. “I didn’t think it would rebuff me as it did.”
Morgott chose not to dignify that with an answer, although his brow furrowed—in concentration, or annoyance. Perhaps some quantity of both. More golden motes suffused the empty chamber as he spoke them into existence, giving the Erdtree Sanctuary a luminous aura. Like stray embers, drifting from a fire, before winking out one by one.
Vyke’s teeth clenched as the magic washed over him, and in spite of himself, he found it difficult to look away. Under the pulse of amber light, skin knitted itself back together along the interstice. Blisters scabbing at unnatural speeds. The fractal burns lost some of the intensity in their color, but didn’t fully fade, as the sensation ebbed. Abruptly, the grip that had been steadying his arm released him.
“There. For all the good it will do thee.” His shoulders hunched as he scowled down at his handiwork. “That scar is beyond my mending. Thou willst bear it in perpetuity.”
Vyke inspected the raised lines branching across his skin. The residual pain had faded to a dull ache, and he exhaled silently. “Thank you for tending to—”
“Of course, it would have been avoided altogether, hadst thou a shred of reason.” Vyke jerked back as the glowering face was thrust nearly into his. The sudden proximity, and the impropriety of it, were either ignored or beyond his care at the moment. Not all that surprising, since he was preoccupied with his own self-righteousness. “The thorns repel all manner of attack in equal measure. What didst thou think would happen when thou blasted it with lightning?”
“I thought I might die and be spared another one of your lectures.” It was an irreverent thing to say to a demigod, let alone a scion of the Golden Lineage. But the aftereffects of the incantation had left him feeling lightheaded. His eyes drifted to the curtain of vines overhead, cascading in verdant arabesques, so that he didn’t have to meet his ornery stare. “At least we now know it doesn’t work.”
Something about the absurd matter-of-factness appeared to mollify him. That, or the dissonance of Vyke’s answer, with the precipitating event, had convinced him that lecturing was pointless.
Which was why it startled Vyke when a calloused hand shot forward, and roughly seized his chin—and suddenly, he was forced to meet his gaze. Under the clinical scrutiny, he felt dissected. An insect with its wings pulled off.
Whatever Morgott had been searching for, he either didn’t find it, or he was disappointed by what he did. The viselike fingers didn’t relent as he turned toward the woman observing nearby, her arms folded over each other with practiced indifference. “Didst thou counsel him toward this lunacy, maiden?”
She peered out from beneath the ornate fillet, the lacework rendering her a portrait framed in powdered snow. “I take credit for his achievements, not his follies,” she said. The faintest amusement crept into her voice. Then, more soberly, she continued. “I neither advised nor discouraged him, my lord. With the battery of tests we’ve already run, it seemed inevitable. What harm was there in trying?”
The single, golden eye turned downward, toward the fractal pattern radiating across Vyke’s skin. “What harm indeed.”
His momentary inattention had loosened his grip, and Vyke extricated himself from it. He reclined a little against the steps, grateful for the support of the marble.
“There’s not much point in proceeding with caution,” Vyke said.
Not when resurrection had already turned his body into a thanatotic constellation of scars. If Vyke wanted, he could unfasten his other vambrace and show him the countless pale lines crisscrossing his skin. The physical memory of lacerations. Or shed the hauberk under his armor—the steel ringlets a pale imitation of the Great Runes humming below his chest—and reveal the shallow pits in his abdomen left by crossbolts. It was difficult to say if there was any part of him not marred, not touched in some way, by the endless cycle.
His flesh was a mosaic of death.
A small wonder, that self-preservation now felt antithetical.
Vyke had hoped the pragmatism would appeal to Morgott. Reassure him, maybe. He didn’t intend for Morgott’s expression to darken. His eye closed, and he breathed out a ragged sigh. Like loose parchment fluttering across the flagstones. “Maiden, kindly fetch him some water. There’s an ewer in my study.”
She didn’t contest the dismissal. With a polite bow, she departed, her robes scattering erdleaves across the hallowed floor.
The fic this was taken from, Far Beyond the Sundown, is my interpretation of Vyke after he was brought back Tarnished. I’m a huge fan of @redzombie’s headcanon that Vyke and Morgott knew each other. (And that Vyke was the only Tarnished that Morgott endorsed to become Elden Lord, way back when. Their alliance was kept a secret—especially after The Incident.)
