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2025-07-14
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2025-07-20
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3/?
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It Shall Be as You Remember

Summary:

A thin, gray hand emerged from the folds of his cloak. The Creature’s telltale scales swayed, held aloft by the crook of a single finger. The Fell stared, jaw clenched. Tail stiff. Fur risen across his shoulders. The outside chill took root beneath his ribs, scouring his bones. He recognized the engraved artifact that weighed the instrument on one side. His shackle.

“Unbalanced,” the Creature lamented.

“I made no bargain with thee,” the Fell hissed.

“You made no bargain with me,” the Creature echoed amenably. “You are the prize he bargained for.”

 

The Fell Omen's eye is brimming with Grace. Executor saw it, behind the gauzy veil of Night that shrouds his face. A man so blessed by the Crucible does not deserve to be a puppet of the Nightlords. But Executor should be cautious when making deals with a Demon.

Notes:

Yeah, another WIP from me! But I always like to have something smaller in the works when a bigger project starts to stall. It keeps things fresh in my mind.

This fic will have probably around 20ish chapters, and wont have nearly the length my recent longfics have, I promise you. Executor just intrigues the hell out of me, and you know i adore Morgott. I know the summary might sound a little risqué, but I don't actually plan on any smut in the present.

Chapter Text

“There is no escape for thee.”

 

Recluse collapsed with a cry. Night’s grasping tendrils plucked at her sweat-damp silver hair and mauve skirts. Rooted her to the mossy stone of the ruin’s steps. She was easier prey this way. The Night did not kill. It corroded. It devoured. It would climb upon the Recluse’s shoulders and force her head beneath the surface of the abyss. Then a little more of her would be missing come morning.

“I have her!”

Guardian’s harried declaration clapped Executor’s shoulder as he sprinted past. Executor was closer, but that did not deter the pinionfolk. Guardian needed Recluse, so he had a vested interest in rescuing the witch from Night’s maw- lest it stole from her the knowledge to curb curses. But Executor knew better than to assume their bond was forged from alloy so flimsy as obligation. And if Executor himself had fallen in Recluse’s stead, the Guardian would have rushed to his aid with the same urgency.

Very well. I have you both..

Executor pivoted from his compatriots and drew Suncatcher from its scabbard in time to deflect their assailant’s sword.

The Fell Omen was more than twice Executor’s height. The muscles of his arms were thicker around than the Nightfarer’s waist. Every blow he dealt was bolstered by malicious ferocity. Executor’s bones should have shattered into splinters, but Suncatcher absorbed the brutal force. An auric gleam shone on its cursed steel. Nevertheless, the Omen’s strikes were unrelenting. Executor’s breath caught in his lungs; his arms rattled with every blocked attack.

Two swipes of a conjured dagger made his elbows ache. An overhead strike from the wicked curved sword was enough to compromise his stance. A horizontal follow-up pushed him back onto his heels. He reeled as Suncatcher shuddered with stored power; the ribbon ward that bound the blade rippled with golden thread.

The Fell Omen discarded his dagger for a hammer. Its head could pulp a magma wyrm’s skull. As he drew his arm back, Executor found his footing. He darted forward, unleashing Suncatcher before the hammer could fall. The weapon dissolved in the Fell Omen’s fist as harmless motes.

Executor sheathed Suncatcher into the Omen’s gut. The Fell was brought to his knees. His long exhale was warm on Executor’s upturned face. His subdued sound of pain puffed against the Nightfarer’s lips. A thin stream of blood trickled down Suncatcher’s steel. Dewy drops gathered on the hilt guard’s edge before weeping upon the stone of the ruins. The Omen’s blood was dark with a surreal sheen to it. Like oil spilled across still water.

Is this the corruption of Night?

No, it was not. Executor’s certainty remained even though the memory of this knowledge had been scoured away. The Fell Omen was different from the other monsters captured by the Night.

“Lost thy nerve, Little Pillager?” The Fell taunted.

Pain frayed the edge of his voice, but the steel beneath it was uncompromised. Haughty despite his grievous wound. His features were obscured by a hazy violet veil. But this close, Executor snagged a glimpse of a fanged sneer. Beneath his heavy brow, a golden seed glowed in its hooded setting.

The Omen’s eye was beautiful.

Perhaps the Executor’s nerve did fail him.

His hesitancy was the Fell’s boon. He swatted Executor away, prying Suncatcher from his flesh with a scalding spray of blood. The blow was sharp enough to throw Executor meters away, where he crumpled in an undignified sprawl. He’d maintained his grip on his sword; Suncatcher sparked gold and dripped with inhuman ichor.

Clawed hands grasped his shoulders. Guardian hauled him to his feet as though he weighed nothing.

“Well struck,” he said. He had the permanent glower all raptors wore, but his tone was equal parts admiration and concern. “All well?”

Executor nodded.

“My thanks.” Recluse seemed to drift to his other side. Her soft expression contrasted her disaffected speech.

Before them, the Fell Omen readied himself. His ragged cloak concealed his injury, but the silvery pelt of his legs was soddening with dark blood. The veil hung about his horns masked him again. The flint of his eye was lost. The Executor clung to the memory of it. The color. The radiance. It was perfect. So long as the Night did not rob him of it.

Let me see it once more, he prayed.

The Fell Omen was not obliging.

 

“...Thy journey is at an end.”

Chapter Text

The Executor had painted the Erdtree in a myriad of shades since his arrival at the Roundtable Hold. Gold so pale as to be white. Reddish alloy to match his Crucible armor. The dandelion of holy incantations.

The hue he’d mixed today was tainted with embers. A deeper, fiery amber. More yellow than not, but warm.

The smear of paint, dewy upon the pallet, was the glowering iris of the Fell Omen. He daubed it upon the canvas… and found it pleasing.

A knot in his stomach was undone.

The tide of Night had overtaken the expedition as they’d desperately battled the Fell Omen. With the acidic rain sapping their vigor, the Fell had mercilessly crushed them. But Executor had not forgotten the beautiful, hateful spark of his eye when he’d awoken again at the Roundtable Hold.

The Duchess was always aware the moment a party of Nightfarers returned from Limveld. She also knew innately whether or not they had succeeded in confronting the Nightlord. But she did not need the Formless Master’s whispering voice to intuit that they had failed in spectacular fashion; Executor, Recluse, and Guardian had not been gone long.

Guardian was a proud man; he had been quick to blame himself for the misfortune of his compatriots. Thus, Duchess and Raider had come with kindly commiserations. Executor had overheard them conversing as he’d roused in his open casket of stone. The entwined white roots overhead- washed out by ghostflame- were not unlike the spiraled roots of the spirit shelters that safeguarded pockets of land from Night’s ravages. He had risen from his death sleep and greeted his fellow Nightfarers with a shallow bow. Then he’d gone to his easel to paint. Gradually, the host of the Hold had trickled out to join him.

“I hear you finally faced the Omen, Recluse,” Ironeye drawled.

He sat upon a crumbling waist-high wall, fletching arrows with hawk’s feathers. As his moniker suggested, he was a discerning sort. He gave the Executor a wide berth, rarely speaking to him. It was not Executor himself that he disliked, but Suncatcher. Executor did not resent him for it.

“I did,” Recluse answered.

“What did you make of it?”

“He is a strange creature.”

“Oh?” Raider chuckled. “Was it the horns that gave it away? Or the tail, perhaps?”

“He is cursed.”

“The Night is a curse upon us all.” It was Wylder, jumping down from the broken floor of the Roundtable’s dining room. He deftly balanced a motley of vessels on a tray: goblets and tankards filled with beer or watered wine. He, Duchess, and the Iron Menial were preparing a meal to welcome the expedition home. The Nightlord yet lived, but good food shared amongst friends would mend their morale.

“Be that as it may,” the Recluse conceded with a hint of impatience. “-something else hath afflicted his ichor.”

To be Omen is to be cursed.

Executor’s hand froze mid-stroke. He wondered where instinctual thought had come from. The incomplete Erdtree upon his canvas offered no wisdom. It was a mere trunk rising from a shapeless mist of grays and gold-greens.

“What does it matter?” Ironeye asked dismissively.

“It is… lamentable,” Guardian interjected. Recluse was tending to his limp wing, seeming to preen the kinked and lusterless feathers. It was a curse that withered his limb, robbing him of flight. It was the same malady that had decimated his people- his flock- before he’d found himself at the Roundtable Hold. Perhaps a desire to defend Recluse from Ironeye’s scrutiny and doubt had prompted him to interject. The Guardian seemed aware of Executor’s attention, because his perpetual glare became trained on him. “The Night has trapped and distorted countless living things. The Fell Omen is unique among its monsters. He is the only one to have ever spoken to us. He must have been someone remarkable, once, to have endured as he has in that corruption.”

It was validation he wanted, so Executor readily gave it. This earned him a scoff from Revenant as she strolled through the congregation. A fresh crown of flowers adorned her head and she smelled of powder. She was, in essence, a spirit inhabiting a doll, so she never supped with her fellow Nightfarers.

“I see little point in pitying anything Nightclaimed,” she said primly without waiting for a response.

“Oh, I do not pity the Fell,” Guardian retorted in a low tone. But Revenant was already drifting out of earshot into the recesses of the Hold.

Do I?

Executor studied his unfinished work as conversation lilted in a new direction- the previous topic having been unmoored by Revenant’s unceremonious arrival and departure. The paint he had mixed was drying at the edges. He set upon the Erdtree’s portrait again, but his listless unease had returned. He set down the brush. The table needed to be set anyhow.

—-------------------------

True night never haunted the Roundtable Hold. Dark clouds obscured the heavens, and a prolonged dusk descended upon the sanctuary. At that cool, dim hour, the Executor browsed the Roundtable’s substantial collection of tomes. It had been tenderly accumulated over countless years. Generations of Nightfarers had salvaged the Lands Between’s eroding erudition and cleansed it via Grace. An entire hall of the Hold had been transformed into a library. Executor scanned the spines of books in various stages of disrepair, a lantern in hand.

The brim of Recluse’s broad hat peered from behind a laden shelf.

“Thou’rt curious as well,” she declared lightly. At Executor’s nod, a small smile touched her lips. Some of the other Nightfarers thought the witch was cold, but the Executor found her no more reserved than Ironeye. No more soft-spoken than the Duchess.

Executor nodded, and Recluse approached him in a swirl of purple skirts. “I saw the Fell’s blood upon thy blade, and I scented a curse.”

Executor expressed his agreement with a mouthed ‘yes’. Voiceless, but understood.

“I sought the Iron Menial first, but he recalleth not a tome that might illuminate the Omen’s nature. I endeavored to find a book myself… Alas, I fear the Roundtable Hold is wanting.”

She must have set to searching the moment dinner concluded. Still, she could not have exhausted her options in only a few hours. Executor set the lantern upon the nearest table and gazed up at the looming bookshelves.

Recluse hummed, “Perhaps together we shall stumble upon our answers. Lest thou knowest something I do not?”

She was not accusatory, but hopeful. Executor cast her an incredulous look.

“Thy primordial beast is horned.”

So it was, but the beast was a manifestation of the Crucible. A blessed incantation, not a hex. Inextricably part of him, body and soul. He shrugged in response- a roll of his shoulder.

“Very well.” Recluse gestured to the ladder leaning in the corner of the room, delegating him to the investigation of the loftier shelves. The glow of the lantern did not reach so far upward, so Recluse set sorcerous embers alight in the sconces- flameless but bright.

The hours passed in relative silence. Executor did not speak, and Recluse- while happy to converse- was equally content in the companionable quiet. Neither noticed when the blueish light spell extinguished itself. They realized it was dawn filling the library with its spectral presence when the Ironeye paused at the threshold, smelling like sea wind. He said nothing- just stared. When he departed, his judgement lingered like a malodorous scent.

Recluse sighed, “Shall we break our fast?”

—-------------------------

After days of research, Executor at last found a mention of Omen in the frayed journal of a Limveld steward. His Lord had quartered a host from the royal Capital for an unspecified conflict. The steward expressed great distress that half-a-dozen Omen had accompanied the host. He described the red sores that wept where their horns had been cut. He remarked upon the clever spell that had been engraved upon their weapons so that they could be disarmed at a brisk command. These measures had been taken to force the Omen into servile compliance, he had been assured. He lamented all the same that the King would foist these fell beasts upon him when soldiers and knights would have surely sufficed.

Executor shut the thin book, unnerved. The binding flaked at his fingertips.

He returned to his painting but could not put the words from his mind.

Chapter 3

Notes:

Humbly take this chapter of more blatant Margit ogling before the plot kicks up.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The Priestess donned her cloak one morn and asked of Executor a boon. Though he had hailed originally from the Land of Reeds, he was the sole Nightfarer to have lived in the Lands Between before the calamity of the Shattering. He was the sole Nightfarer to have known the warmth of the Erdtree’s light. So she bid him collect flowers brimming with Grace.

A strange request. And though Executor had questions, he did not voice them.

By no means was the Priestess’s task his burden alone to bear. He could have made a proper expedition of it; no doubt his companions at the Hold would have joined him eagerly. But as the Priestess had surmised, he knew of a place where Grace-golden blossoms flourished. It was a land beyond Limveld- a land that seemed to exist only in Executor’s memory. He was not confident that the other Nightfarers could manage the journey, so he did not invite them to share his duty. He went to the bluff and leapt into the spectral hawk’s talons. The gray sea rushed below his dangling legs, and he was swallowed up by ashen fog.

—----------------

The Executor did not remember the name of this country, but there was something eerily familiar about the rolling plains and their rasping, chest-high grasses. Decrepit windmills groaned dejectedly at the gentle wind. The surrounding forests were crowned by amber canopies- as though trapped in a perpetual autumn. But it was not the turn of the seasons that banished the greenery. Their proximity to the Erdtree gilded the plants, as well as men’s souls. The horizon was steeped in twilight… and was unnervingly empty. The Night shifted the earth itself, and Executor had not laid eyes upon the Erdtree in a long, long while.

Sometimes Night’s tide washed up the fragmented shards of a city upon the shores of the plain. Indigo taint seeped from between the stones that comprised its disintegrating walls. Executor had walked the cracked and crooked streets frequently. Many of the buildings were sealed with corpsewax growing gray-violet with rot. The lost guardians of the Erdtree roamed the thoroughfares with mad knights and gargoyles. The Capital’s surviving, sane populace braved the wilderness rather than remain in the hostile city. The land was so fertile and vibrant it had withstood the Night thus far. Executor stumbled upon their villages on occasion. He was rarely welcomed.

It was said that the Capital's sovereign, the King, had possessed a stone heart, a steel fist, and an iron will. Reclusive and hard, whatever love the people had for him had eroded in the Night. But they remembered one thing, at least. He had marshalled a host and gone to Limveld to confront the Night. His scattered army, clad in gold and wielding the Dragon’s lightning, still meandered the countryside, adrift. Their King was nowhere to be found.

Executor gave that sad city and its crumbling villages a wide berth. Only the death of the Nightlord would end their suffering, and Executor had come for flowers.

He trudged up a knoll, putting the Capital’s ruins behind him. Atop the hill, the grass grazed his breastplate. But the shade of the nearby trees stunted them, allowing a rash of wildflowers to proliferate. He admired them. Lush crimson roses brandished black thorns as they skirted tree trunks. Clovers and thistles sported pink-violet blossoms. Scrubby patches of heather bloomed mauve amidst the eternal gold. They were out of season, addled by the Night’s meddling. Most of the flowers were yellow, of course. But none of them would satisfy the Priestess.

Executor waded into the plain as though it were a lake- stepping gingerly over ground he could scarcely see. He was more likely to flush partridges and dormice and rat snakes than a proper threat, but it never hurt to be cautious.

He felt exposed with a naught but open sky above him, but eventually that itching sensation sloughed off like an unclasped cloak. The omnipresent humidity of the Plateau summoned flies to buzz against his ear and taste the sweat on his cheek.

The coveted blossoms he sought reached almost as high as the grasses surrounding them. Though the plants they sprouted from were modest, stout succulents. Each individual flower was narrow and fluted like a miniscule buisine. But their clusters reminded Executor of candles dripping wax as the buds at the bottom of the raceme drooped. The spindly, swaying blossoms gleamed in the sunlight. Though, they would similarly glow in defiance of nightfall- which would soon inflict itself upon the Plateau. Executor knelt in the plain- was engulfed by the flaxen tide. He needed to work quickly and find the nearest spirit shelter. If he searched the sky, he would see the ashen seedlings materializing in the gloom.

He unslung a satchel from his shoulder and removed its contents: a pile of small canvas bags and a trowel. The Priestess had not specified whether he should return with plucked stems or the intact plant. But he supposed he did not much like the idea of gifting the Priestess a bouquet doomed to die. With the trowel he extracted a succulent- roots yet clinging to its soil- from the rich black earth. He nestled it into one of the sacks. He gathered eight Blessed blooms in all and arranged them into his now-bulging satchel. The lofty racemes displayed their proud flowers above Executor’s head like a plume. As he contemplated how he was going to transport his Blooms across the Plateau without damaging them, a chill raked icy talons down his spine.

Beneath the scent of pollen was an animal musk. Flies flitted by Executor’s ear, and he wondered whether nectar or carrion enticed them. He gripped the hilt of his katana and watched the fluid undulation of the grass. Rune bears made dens in the dense forests away from the Capital’s ruins. But lions were known to hunt the plains. The Night had made all manner of beasts unnaturally daring and ravenous.

A low rumble subsumed the dull drone of the landlocked tide. Softer than a growl. Executor’s cursed blade unsheathed with a quiet hiss in response. He glanced about and felt stranded in an indifferent sea. The tree line seemed like safety- an island to wash ashore upon- but it was a kilometer away. He stepped back, and rolled his ankle on an unseen obstacle.

A jolt of pain jabbed his tailbone as he fell, but he managed not to cry out. His leg was hooked over the thing he’d tripped over. It was as thick around as a fallen log. He silently cursed his clumsiness, but then…

He’d had cause to dread. The ‘tree’ was a knotted coil of muscle pelted with gray fur. It was a club of a tail laden with curled, ruddy horns.

The peaceful breaths of the slumbering creature puffed into an agitated snort. Executor’s own lungs seized.

Surely not…

There was a childish part of Executor that had always thought of the gilt country of the Capital as his. A foolish notion. But all the same, he would never have expected to confront this adversary here, in broad daylight, however winnowing.

The Fell Omen rose from the grass, blinking his bleary eye. His ragged cloak was slipping off of his shoulders. Daylight gilded the silver guard hairs on his chest and arms. He yawned; black-lined lips drew back over leonine fangs. It was then that Executor realized that the Night’s violet veil did not obscure the Fell’s face. Twilight shone upon his features, revealing a bulbous and lumpy nose, a wrinkled brow sagging from the knobs of cut horns, and a strong jaw furred by white whiskers. He flushed blue-violet at the tips of his ears and nose, sunburnt. The luminous petals of the blooms stuck to his throat and cheek from where he’d laid upon them. They were littered in his mussed hair. When he sighed, a forlorn petal was dislodged by his exhale. His tail shivered with a subtle stretch, bucking Executor before it thumped against the ground. Sunset blazed in the Omen’s glare.

There was nowhere to hide. The Fell Omen was an adept predator; if he could hunt the Nightfarers anywhere in the Limveld wilderness, then this stretch of grassland was no protection. Executor readied Suncatcher and inched away from the Fell’s tail.

The Omen inhaled, and the gentle rumblings of his waking warped into a throaty growl.

Trespasser.

When the Omen noticed Executor- sword drawn and hands stained with soil- his disdain became wrath. The interloper in his nest, after all, was no ignorant animal nor a hapless, displaced wanderer. The Omen bared his teeth. The fur at his nape bristled. His hatred masked his shock. Executor gestured to his bag filled with flowers and wet earth- a futile explanation. The Fell Omen became incensed.

“Unsated, art thou, by pilfered treasure and ill-gotten runes? As I suspected, Gold was the prize thou coveted!”

The last word he roared, guttural- phlegmy from sleep. Executor knew firsthand that the Fell was spryer than his haggard appearance suggested. Still, he was unprepared for the Omen’s assault. The Fell’s knuckle glanced off of Suncatcher’s edge. The skin split, and shimmering blood beaded.

The Fell Omen’s paw was wider than the Executor's torso. The heel of his palm forced the air from Executor’s lungs. In an instant, Executor was pinned. A cage of thick, calloused fingers trapped his limbs. His satchel was crushed against him. The stems of the racemes snapped in the Fell’s grip, releasing a grassy odor. Executor squirmed as the Fell Omen leered, his hair slipped from behind his ears and brushed against Executor’s face. It was only a little matted with sweat and dirt.

Executor panted shallowly. The Omen’s constricting hold was slowly suffocating him. The Fell but needed to exert the slightest effort, and Executor would be split open like a nut upon a stone. The Omen’s blood oozed down his fingers and smeared against Executor’s abdomen. It was practically scalding against his skin.

“I have thee now, thievish brute.”

The Fell’s utterance shuddered, contemptuous and enthralled. His fingers cinched just so, squeezing Executor’s body enough to bruise but not maim. The flowers were thoroughly destroyed. But that did not concern the Fell- to him, it seemed, they were ruined the moment they had come into the Nightfarer’s possession. But Executor mourned their wasteful demise. Blessed Blooms were not easily found- not anymore.

The Fell Omen broke the first rib. The plate fused to Executor’s flesh began to chafe and cut. The Omen absorbed his agony with blatant approval, sneering. When the second rib shattered, Executor’s scream became a roar. His unmoored mind thrashed in a suddenly alien vessel. He came to a heartbeat later as blood burst over his tongue.

The Beast was larger than the Fell Omen. Larger by far. And in the scant moments Executor had required to claim control of his Crucible-blessed form, the Beast had seized the Fell’s throat in his jaws. The Beast drove his hind claws into the earth, brutally tilling it as he tried to topple the Fell onto his back. Hot blood seared his gums, dribbled down his chin. The Fell did not fold. His great hands grasped the Beast’s jaws and made to pry them away from his vulnerable flesh. His pulse hammered against the Beast’s tongue. The Beast grabbed for the Omen’s shoulders, scoring bloody furrows into his arms and shredding his cloak further.

They grappled, inelegant and desperate, across the patch of Blessed Blooms. Neither was willing to yield, because it would mean their death. The sky rapidly bruised to purple. The Fell’s slick and bleeding fingers adjusted their grip. Then his arms twisted with a jerk. Executor’s mandible dislocated with a sickening crack.

The Fell Omen threw the Beast back. And Executor found himself gazing breathlessly at the sudden encroachment of Night. Yellow motes darted before him like dwindling fireflies as the Aspect dissolved. He stood, shaky, and discovered Suncatcher yet clutched in his hand. But his enemy had not pursued him.

The Fell Omen panted amidst the trampled flowers. His chest and arms were painted with his strange blood. More gushed in rivulets from the punctures the Beast’s teeth had hewn. But the Fell had prevented his throat from being torn out. He hunched in obvious pain.

Night crept, insidious, across the earth. But the Fell did not retreat from it. The blue flame licked at his furred ankles. Across his broad shoulders. Over the coil of his tail. The drizzle wet his silvery hair and dripped from his horns in smoldering, indigo droplets.

Come away.

Executor sheathed his blade and beckoned. Nights questing fingers drove him backward. Until the rain that fell upon the Omen was a torrent.

The Fell snarled, “Night take thee, Abomination.”

Notes:

I know those flowers are technically called Blessed Flowers, but use Blessed Blooms 1) to not overuse the word flowers 1000 times and 2) because the flowers are blatantly just Altus Blooms.