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He saw the little Tarnished long before he would wield his great, golden ax in front of her.
She was there. There for days. Maybe weeks. Coming in through the side of the tower, felling the Fell Omen.
If it weren’t for the little fact that she would have had to defeat the great bastard Margit and trapeze through his castle goers, he would have thought her lower than shit itself. She was an animal of little regard as she left roof-top to roof-top on fated feet.
But there she was. Not looking his way, but looking skyward. The great, bulbous helmet wrought around her face shone like a silver beacon. One eye hole. A mouth slit. Clothing allowed the sun to peek in between her breasts to the shiny, coppery skin beneath. Glimmering with sweat. Like gold hidden under blood.
A woman carved from precious metal.
The first time Godrick had laid eyes on her, he thought he would be watching her slip and fall. Like one of the rats, the limescale ungraspable even in the deftest of fingers. But there she was, leaping and landing. Graceful…In a strikingly feral way.
Then he awaited her in the arena like he awaited all Tarnished. And she did not come.
And when someone did come- it was not her. Tarnished all the same, but not the golden-skinned escaped prisoner. With the wrought helm.
And thus, he felt even more anger. His ax finding purchase, his blade cutting down and through and across- crushing, tearing, and bleeding out seven… seven Tarnished beings before he saw her again.
He’d found it sickening that he was watching for her lithe, sweeping jumps. For an eyeful of that gloriously tinted skin and the hardy sweat that tricked from it.
Godrick did not yearn for the Tarnished. Could not yearn- or at least he would not admit such a bastard idea. He could not lower himself to such horrible standards. He could not. He was Lord of the Golden. Godrick the Golden. And a little Tarnished leaping on rooftops was meant for death.
Instead, he was amused by it. It. Not her. No longer her. He forced himself to be amused, like a child watching a jester.
‘It’ was leaping over rooftops again, surefooted and weightless. A smear of black and red. And at first, he thought it was wearing something new- but no. It was blood. It slicked across skin and muscle and he couldn’t tell if it was its own, or something else.
That would soon be rewritten.
It was rewritten just like his internal proclamation to call that Tarnished ‘it’. She. She. She. Her. His. All unwrapping in such short strides.
She stripped back the clothing, and it bared her skin to the sun. Her breasts. Her shoulders were unmarked by grafting.
It left him frozen. A voyeur as he watched her prod and pick at the edges of a wound on her side.
Godrick. Lord Godrick. A demigod, a royal. He was no man , yet he sat staring up at a little Tarnished. Skin like gold. And thus, he felt very much like a common man. A little, sickly, man.
His father had been grafted. His grandfather had been golden. Was this a send-off? A showing of what was truly golden, of worth? An insult to his diluted blood, no doubt.
His limbs shuddered, moving and pulling at his tunic. At his cloak. At his breeches. Ever watching as the Tarnished pulled her clothing shut and lept away.
He didn’t know if he would kill her or keep her. Or tuck her body so far into himself that he was a suit of skin, no longer diluted- but full of gold once more. His heart, the original, thrummed and pittered in his chest in its alcove of foreign cardiac muscle.
When she didn’t show up for a while, he shook. Rage? Perhaps.
But he called forth his tenants and exiles. His banished. And he commanded them to find her. And they were commanded to bring her to him alive .
To die, to bleed, to graft- It didn’t matter what they thought.
He would have all three, he would have none! But it did not matter.
Godrick stood sleepless, staring at the rooftops. Killing these unknown, faceless Tarnished without blinking, without dramatics. When the invasions halted for brief periods, he stalked the halls and courtyards he could fit into, searching for the hide, hair, or corpse of hisTarnished.
There was a moment in which he had brought his great, heavy arms to the side of the walls and tested their stiffness, their strength.
He was sorely disappointed when the masonry crumbled, ancient, under his fists. The barely lit crevices darkened beyond and between, not a sliver of light passing from behind his hulking mass. His anger and his hunger.
For two days he was in mourning. A slatheringly sharp sweetness to every moment his bleeding gaze swept over his kingdom. And then at the break of dawn, he saw her again.
He was prepared to scream. To yell, to fling himself at the walls to drag her down to his little arena. To keep her in his sight. To keep her to himself.
Yet he withheld himself. For his Tarnished sat hunched. Leaning back on a bit of brickwork, holding her leg with both hands, a slick of blood creeping from under her like a shadow.
Who would have dared?
Another Tarnished. Clamped back in large swatches of armor, black. Stolen from the banished knights; a blade held skyward.
His Tarnished, still bright and imbued with gold, slipped into a stand. Her feet were unsteady, her leg spat blood. Some of his fingers trembled, clenching and unclenching. Blood and grit between the fingers of unused hands peeled and fell from his skin.
Godrick did not move, but he wished he had. Broken the sliding and ill-fitted cowardice that bloomed in his being. Ate at him. It was like watching a magnificent bird be eaten in flight by a dragon, two crashing things of beauty and power succumbing to one another.
Reach up and take her.
No. He watched her stand, watched her run, and then watched her leap. Her pursuer also ran, although encumbered by his heavy new armor. The edges were far apart, the distance too far. The pit and the snake lay below- far below.
Yet she lept. More intent on dying in flight than being struck down by a thieving Tarnished.
And Godrick was still frozen like a cowardly little boy when she made it. Her gut slammed into the edge of the roof roughly as her helm knocked hard against the clay thatching. It sounded like a bell: ringing out like a toll. A summons to death.
Bleeding leg loose, arms trembling, he watched her drag herself on top of the roof; laying on her back, unmoving. Her shirt, which was still stained and ugly, had been pulled from her shoulders to reveal a distinct body. Dirty, bloody.
It trembled something in him, something ugly and known. Greed. Heady and unwise it churned his gut with a great force, leaving his mouth tacky as he thought of where she was. How he would get to her.
How would it feel to hold her with hundreds of hands?
Reach up and take her. Kill her, fuck her, eat her before someone else could even try-!
The Tarnished in black armor stood still. A statue, almost, as its blade glinted horribly in the sun, rays catching scars in the iron. Then he slid back, his helm moving as he seemed to assess the gap between him and his golden Tarnished.
The sword slid back and out came a crossbow.
Godrick would rip him in two, he decided. Firmly, from the legs upward so he could revel in the pain he caused. Something to stifle the rage. He was frothing at the mouth-
His Tarnished scraped herself into a seated position alongside the decorative masonry, tucked herself down and in as she pulled things out from inside her pack. A bolt glanced against the bulbous edge of her helm.
Godrick had had enough of this. Enough to make every node-- all his points of connection grind and bunch- his body ached with so many feelings. So much anger that he shook and the earth shook with him.
His hands felt the edge of masonry, his nails breaking or gouging paths on the stone walls, then, tremendously, one hand fell on the black Tarnished and one on his gold Tarnished.
One hand the grip of a God. Crushing, cruel, cold- a period. The end of a sentence, the end.
One the soft, sweet grasp of a dominant lover. An electrified connection as if she were a lightning bolt he had struck from the sky itself.
Godrick made good on his desire, pulling the squirming black Tarnished into the creux of many distal hands where his stolen armor did little to stop the crushing, pulling hands. But he did not savor such a moment as his attention was nourished by the solidity of the golden Tarnished.
Bathed in rays of gold- like a fruit of the Great Tree itself.
“Ahh, dearest of things.” Godrick murmured, placated. “Such a wondrous thing you are, o’ sweet gold.”
If she struggled, he could not feel it. His hands were on her, blanketing her. Holding her hands, wrists, biceps- converging in the spaces between her pelvis and ribs and behind the knees. Gentle, but entirely possessive.
Her eye, whiskey red and umber, shown with the greatest confusion behind the dented hole in the exile's helm. Her breath rattled the lock at her neck- but Godrick misplaced that panic for awe quite readily.
“Great Godfrey, do thou witness me?” Lips curled, and his crown a warm pressure where it once had felt a burden, Godrick did speak to an ear unseen. “Witness mine ascension, as I too, becom’st as gold as you, o’forefather.”