Chapter Text
"Ah... ah... you pointless brute! You cannot be reasoned with!"
Count Ymir grasped for her throne, and fell back on it. She held her bleeding face in her hands, the deep red spilling like liquor on her pale skin.
"Cut me down, then! If that's all you're good for! You wretched... you wretched thing!"
"GRRRR..."
"Oh, why do I bother."
She made a gesture of putting her hands to her chest, and grasped it, as if a terrible secret would have burst out of her at a moment's notice.
"Fine, do not speak to me as your equal, you wretched beast. But I know that you understand language, so let me just say this, and this alone: you are doomed."
She slid down from her throne and to her knees, on the dark marble floor. It was scarcely illuminated by the glintstone of the church.
"You will fail, because the Two Fingers remain in the darkness, waiting. It may take one year, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand, but you would do well to remember: they live longer than us. They can wait. And you can not."
Her mouth curled into a wicked smile.
"Long may you reign, Elden Lord."
She wheezed and coughed up blood, her chin and chest being colored by it.
"They will wait! And hatch schemes you can not begin to comprehend. That is what they do, and they are good at it!"
The Tarnished stood still, and absent-mindedly crushed a Fingercreeper flying at it from the side, without even looking. It was to it as if swatting a fly, a being of seemingly so little importance than the act of taking its life, and making it dead, forever, was of little consequence. It did not warrant the Tarnished's full attention.
Ymir looked at the poor thing wriggling on the floor, until it stopped moving. She shed a single tear.
"They will select new Empyreans! They will create circumstances that threaten you. One day someone younger than you, stronger than you, will come knocking and ask of you the crown! Maybe even to supplant the Erdtree with something new! But..."
The Tarnished was unreadable. Its face, half-hidden behind its helm with the visor held up, was as dark as night. Only the faded eyes were visible, as two points of colorless light in that shadow.
"HHRGGGRRR..."
Ymir broke down and started crying.
"Why can't you see! That these fingers are broken, and their guidance is skewed, and their Gods are wrong! It is all so wrong, it has all so terribly deviated from the intended path!"
She cocked her head to the side, to lock eyes with that beast.
"Ah, that's right. How foolish of me to imagine that a brute like you could understand the concept of Destiny. You are my executor, and I must die. That's simply how the story ends. Do it-"
Ymir's head was cut down with a flash, and rolled on the floor.
And then the Mother was gone.
The Tarnished kicked her head away, and started rummaging through her belongings to see if there was something of value. At some point a glintstone firefly flew too close to it, and it instinctively grasped it with its hand, squeezed the life out of it, and ate it.