#ciaran x artorias

[goodnight-goodknight]

[tenderly] - to tenderly make love to my muse – from Ciaran!

There are times where they chase each other, all teeth and grasping hands and desperately hungry motion as they each sway back and forth between predator and prey. Those nights leave the both of them sweating in one another's arms, covered in bites and scratches enough to prompt sincere questions about their proclivity for battle.

This is not one of those nights. They've done their fighting already today, chased and bled and howled. This is a night for kindness, not hunger - seeking out comfort in the other's love.

She clamps her legs around his waist as the latter sways languidly back and forth above her. Each slow roll of his hips presses steeled love inside her - deep, gentle strokes that rock the length of his shaft against her clit. He moves more up and down than forward, grinding out her pleasure as best he can.

He is rewarded by adoration in her eyes and a song - a song, a song - in her throat, affirmations issuing out of her with every languorous plunge. He sings right back: deep and grateful, each time he feels her clench tighter around him.

She feels so much like home. Even in the midst of that shared kindness, he feels the heat coiling in his belly, prompting him to fall into a steadier, more eager rhythm. That aching length finds the spot she likes most, and what were unhurried swings of his body become more focused. One hand strokes a thumb along her cheek, then reaches down to angle her hips upward to take him a little deeper - just so, just so.

"Ciaran," he half-murmurs, half-growls. "Ciaran, I am close…"

He understands the way she pulls her legs tighter around his reeling waist. He knows what she means, even as her pleasure dissolves her attempts at a response into wordless, whimpering pleas. Right there, she means to say. Right there. Do not stop. Do not stop. Please do not stop.

Inside me, Artorias. All of you. As close as we can get.

She breaks, and arches, finally finding enough air to create the shape of his name amid euphoric moan. That's enough to send him tumbling after: he pulses and groans, pressed into her hollow right to the hilt, spilling warmth into the channel of her body. His hand on her hip gives her the sole mark of the night in a bruise where his grasp pressed into her skin.

"My home, my heart," he breathes. "You are everything."

[flash-sweat]

3)  our muses take a shower together to wash blood off each other. – could be laurentius x anri, could be artorias x ciaran?

He is not used to the blood. Not truly. So much of what he does is at the far end of a greatsword - great and sweeping work, death in seconds as that colossal weapon parts foes like wheat before the scythe. Indeed, at the end of a melee Artorias might emerge from a scrap covered in viscera, anointed in blood, but never truly touched by it. Not tasting it. For him, killing had always been the distant symptom of his true goal, which was pure and simple victory - if he could have achieved his lord's ends without death, in truth, he would have done so.

But there he stands in the cool waters of the river, the dawnlight glinting off the shifting crests of the burbling water, and he trembles in the chill morning air. He is awash in blood - the remnants of some capable rebel knight who managed to relieve Artorias of his weapon. Their subsequent fight had left Artorias covered in spilled life, the king's share of which stemmed from a throat wound inflicted by the wolf knight's teeth.

Now the air mists in front of his face, clouded by his hot breath; his chest rises and falls with hurried gasps as adrenaline does its brutal work on his mind. He stares straight ahead, unable to separate the parts of him that are alternately horrified and euphoric at the way the man's blood tasted.

He does not frequently indulge this side of himself. He tells himself, often, it does not exist. It is very difficult to believe that, now.

Ciaran, on the other hand, was well-used to blood by now. While most of her kills for Gwyn were clean little affairs that merited merely the right knife in the right place, sometimes they struggled. Sometimes she was spotted, just before the kill, and what might have been a silent end is instead a spattered and ragged exit. She had long ceased to panic in the face of truly personal combat - but as she steps into the river behind Artorias, both of them disrobed, she discards thoughts of morning relief in favor of trying to calm him down. He is a vicious wolf, she knows, capable of violence on a scale that might shock Gwyn himself - but he rarely wears it so readily, and she can tell it has unmoored him.

A hand traces the blade of his shoulder, the curve of his spine: a gentle touch, to let him know she was there.

"Stay still, dear wolf," she murmurs, all warm honey, all gentle tone. "Let me..."

When she's certain he won't lunge, she begins to gather water to her hands, presses chilled river to trembling skin. Her ministrations are tender, thorough. Bit by blackened bit, the blood is washed away, and where she is sure he is clean, she presses little kisses to his flesh, to assure him that the combat is over.

"Come back to me, dear wolf," she says, meeting his eyes. "You are not fighting anymore."

He pulls in a deep, gasping heave as the wolf finally lets go of his throat, proverbially speaking, and his posture finally relaxes, as though she'd washed all the tension out of him too.

"Thank you," he breathes, his expression somewhere between relieved and sheepish. "I...do not know what came over me."

"I do," Ciaran says, gently. "And I do not envy it. But think instead of me, if you would, and linger not in blood..."

[through-fire-and-flame]

I would take the suffering from you

--"Suffering," Epic The Musical

[goodnight-goodknight]

The kiss nearly unmakes him; it is so searing, so total and certain as to cause his knees to buckle. He has faced down dragons, rebels, brigands by the score but his legs have never trembled until she kissed him like this. It is a gesture of staggering meaning - giving over what is left to one another after all their prior days have had their bloody due.

She sells herself so short, he thinks, in what muddled thoughts can manifest between the eager attentions of his tongue, catching her bottom lip, seeking out hers for a lover's dance. She tells me she has given so freely of herself that precious little remains - but precious it is, and all the more so for its supposed scarcity. If there is so little of Ciaran left, Artorias would guard that precious core for the rest of his waking days.

"You claim yourself weapon," he breathes, against her mouth. "And yet you kiss me tender. I do not taste blood. Only you, Ciaran."

His hands cup her hips, grasp at the soft curves of her, seek out the swell of her bottom and to pull her closer to him still - claiming, claiming. It isn't empire. It could never be empire, in the way that one dissolves and annexes and conquers. One could not conquer Ciaran anymore than one could catch and hold onto lightning. But it is dominion: the jealously protected expanse of her, gasping as she does under the touch of his hands.

"You claim yourself shadow and yet here you are, flesh beneath my hands, as solid as I," he murmurs. "And I have never known a shadow half so radiant."

The bed lies behind them; Artorias guides her to it, inevitably, inexorably, draping her across the wrinkled covers before he leans down to kiss her again. He cannot get enough of her. It's evident in how his hands have begun to wander in search of more fervent pleasures across her body, sought out places that she wanted touched.

"If you think yourself fractured, I shall gather you to me, Ciaran, and hold you close, and keep you safe," he says, all the craft gone out of his voice, thin-edged as it is with need. He's never been a poet, and what sweet words he has managed to cobble together begin to fray in the heat of their well-stoked desires. "And you me. You have my heart, now."

He presses a palm against where her heart lies, feels it thundering beneath her chest, a steady and heated rhythm made all the more resonant for knowing he has quickened it.

"And you - you are my heart now," he says, quietly. "Please never let me go."

☉ @goodnight-goodknight // cont.

Her face was stripped of its mask, impassive porcelain peeled away like a scale from a fish’s belly. It left her exposed to the breath that beat hot and slow against her freckled cheeks, to the vibration of his words in the air, their reverberance unsettling the delicate balance she had so carefully maintained.

Ciaran allowed him to guide her hand, resting it over the firm slope of his chest. Beneath her touch, Artorias’ chest rose and fell, his heart drumming against her palm as though it beat for only her.

Your wolf.

The phrase clawed at something deep within her, something primal and buried beneath layers of discipline and duty – but still she thought of the liquid dark between stars, of fire-touched portraits. Soot-blotted, burnt-out, paint bubbled and cracked, oil-captured faces spoiled by deliberate ruin. Was she not the same? A being incomplete, hollowed by devotion, by purpose, by the mask she had worn for so long. And yet, here he was, offering her something she scarcely knew how to comprehend. Himself. All of him.

Fingers curled, pressing against his chest as though to test the solidity of him, seeking the heat beneath the armour and gallantry of his words. Under the weight of his confession, her voice buckled, burned to ash. It was not a kiss he sought, not a fleeting connection or a single indulgence. He wanted her. Not as she was trained to be, not as a shadow or a blade, but as a woman – flawed and fractured and aching.

Oh, how marvellously she ached.

“Artorias,” Ciaran whispered at last, her mask slipping. This one not of porcelain, but of poise. “You do not know what you ask.”

Or did he? Familiar, lovesick eyes burned with conviction, with a light so fierce the shadow-shrouded assassin could hardly bear to meet it. It pierced through her like divine radiance, unearthing truths she dared not name – but still she thought of the Abyss, that dark chasm pulling at the wolf-knight with relentless gravity, as though it called to some void within him. Did he not see that same void in her?

You are not whole, an insidious voice whispered in her mind. In this, you are not enough.

Still she wanted him – not just as a lover, but as a possession, as someone to hold and guard and keep, to stitch into her ruinous heartstrings. In turn, she wanted to be his, utterly and irrevocably. The thought terrified her, thrilled her, left her breathless.

“I am but a blade,” she continued, her voice soft and dangerous, her scarred and sun-kissed face mere inches from his. Artorias’ noble head hung low, inviting her to meet him halfway. “A shadow. A creature made for others’ designs. I have given so much of myself that I scarcely know what remains.”

Amber eyes studied him so ferociously it seemed she meant to flay him, but she found no pity there, only understanding.

“But if you are certain,” she murmured, husky voice low and raw, “if you would dare to stake your claim on something so fractured… then take me. Take all of me.”

Even the pieces that might cut him, even the pieces he might choke on.

Ciaran’s breath hitched, the heat of him enveloping her, the nearness of his lips an exquisite agony. Her fingers tightened, gripping a fistful of his fine shirt, her body leaning closer.

“Understand this, my dear Artorias: once you have me, I shall never let you go.”

And then her mouth claimed his. Not in submission, nor surrender, but with a fierce and consuming answer. It was a fire that promised to burn them both, a conflagration born of shared hunger, love and longing.

[fantomette22]

OK WAIT NOW I GOTTA ASK

I wanna know your favs, your blorbos, your special little guys for each of the following:

Kingdom Hearts (I think I know already but in all of the games over all….)

Dark Souls (Now that you played and enjoyed it 😈)

Final Fantasy 7 (I genuinely don’t know for this one)

Dark Souls 2 (I have a hunch…but….)

OK!

KH : Of course dear Brain is my fav <3 Really obscure secondary character of the freaking gacha mobile game XD

But also well I really like the main characters of course aka Sora, Riku & Kairi. But of course all the other big trios (yeah the Disney charac too!). Really like Lauriam & Elrena as well. Really young Xehanort too 🥺😭 (I see vision Nomura! I understand why it's your fav now! Really it's like... he's the same as baby sephiroth I SWEAR!)

FF7: Well I kinda love all the main party of course <3 Zack too and lil Marlene. Hm but more precisely? hm Idk I guess Cloud and Tifa & Aerith especially? (That remind me how I keep forgetting to post some shitpost XD about how our best girls can cause bi awakening lmao but it's more like a joke I guess x) maybe...)

Dark Souls : Solaire, Fair lady & Kirk (really like them!) Sieglinde and Siegmeyer, Andre & ya know the kinder npcs, Artorias & co (with Sif, Ciaran, Hawkeye...Elisabeth), The dark moon knightess & Priscilla & Gwyndolin

DS2: Shanalotte of course, Shalquoir a bit too XD ALVA AND ZULLIE MY BELOVED, mostly all the "good" npcs in Majula (Rosabeth etc), Alsanna & Ivory king <3 all the squad of brume tower too

[katyspersonal]

What's up with hair colors of Gwyn's Knights?

To think about it, it isn't certain that Ornstein had red hair 🤔 In fact, it is actually unlikely!

With Ciaran and Artorias, we know they have ivory and black hair respectively; Ciaran literally decorated her helmet with her own braid (lol), and hair of Artorias that prior was attached to his helmet is strangely placed on his grave:

It is odd, but maybe cutting their long hair and reattaching it to their helmets was deliberate thing Gwyn's Knights did? Maybe to have a "memo" of who they are in case if something changes? Like maybe real hair of Artorias turned white like it happened with Abyss Watchers, so to place his black hair on his grave would be a way to honor his former, true self?

I thought that Ornstein might have done similar thing but.. maybe even if that was intention, could be retconned by Dark Souls 3 times?

The third person in the circle is boss 'Dragonslayer Armor', or rather the guy whom this armor belonged to! They are not carbon copies whereas they do share the same style:

And shared style features red "hair" that both have! Would not that be TOO coincidential if both of the guys that served Nameless King had red hair? 🤔 Whereas Ornstein is a knight of Nameless King, third Dragonslayer guy serves both of them and not only Ornstein, so I don't think that he is simply the one fashioning himself after Ornstein as subordinate. Would not that make more sense if he then fashioned himself after both NK and Ornstein? Nor Ornstein fashions himself after Nameless King, if it was a regular "my boss and boss of my boss" situation then all three would have equal mix of fashioning after their superior and their own style, but Ornstein and Dragonslayer are super similar and might be confused for equals. These guys' comradery is a bit more complicated!

I dunno... I feel like this type of armor is just an armor or servants of Nameless King, so this is the reason the two share the style very closely. They are his lions, so they decorate their helmets with "red mane of a lion"; a thing that traveled into Elden Ring too because we all know ER brings a lot back from Dark Souls x) Meanwhile, I guess the hair-cutting ritual was a special thing of Ciaran and Artorias. Maybe like a promise to each other 🥺

[youtherthyf]

what ships do you guys head canon in dark souls 1?

i know a lot of player X canon ships(solaire, laurincous are perfect)

but like- what characters do you ship together?

i know ciaran x artorias are basically canon but what else do you guys have?

[misskriemhilds]

took these requests on twitter. ty for indulging me!

[goodnight-goodknight]

Love of mine, someday you will die But I'll be close behind, I'll follow you into the dark No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white Just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

--"I'll Follow You Into The Dark," Death Cab for Cutie

[flash-sweat]

1)  our muses are undressing each other for the first time and sender notices receiver’s scars they’ve never seen before. – from Ciaran!

If you went by Artorias' reputation, the man ought to be spotless - between his purported skill and colossal strength, nothing should ever have so much as scratched him. But reputation has a habit of quietly omitting the worser parts: the less glorious battles with brigands who got lucky, or the close scrapes with rebels who had more faith than blood. In truth, Artorias is a reckless man, flinging himself gleeful over enemy lines to wreak havoc in a blur of sword, shield, and silver. Rarely does he emerge from these melees unscathed.

The scathes in question criss-cross his front; there is the barest moment of concern as Ciaran shrugs his undershirt up and over his shoulders for the first time, there in the candle-edged shadows of her chambers. There, a pink-white slash across his stomach - that one very nearly did for him - and there, a darkened gouge down and over his bicep that almost left him without a right arm. There are over a dozen marks across him, all told - at least, the ones big enough to merit mention.

His breath catches in his throat as she takes in the sight of him. Phantom images of being dismissed, of falling in some immutable way short of her expectations assail him, and he feels himself tense under her gaze. There's a moment of silence, and she reaches out one hand to brush over the scar on his stomach.

"These are each a story, are they not?" she murmurs, her stare roving over him. "Each and all - a story of how you made it back to me, each and every time."

The breath leaves him in a relieved sigh, then catches again as she seizes hold of his arm.

"But you had best keep coming back, dear wolf," she says, meeting his gaze. "Or I will drag you up and out of the dark myself, if only to scold you, do you understand me?"

A smile crosses his face - broad and loving and happy. He leans in, and kisses her, gently.

"There is nothing that would fell me, knowing you are waiting, Ciaran," he says. "How could anything hope to stop my heart when it rests here, with you?"

She smiles back at him, charmed despite herself. She knows him best: the rest of the world thinks him to be a simple man, but then he goes and says things like that...

"Should I be assured that the rest of you is safe, then?" she teases, hooking one thumb in his belt and tugging his hips toward her. "I should see for myself..."

"You should," he grins.

[epicfroggz]

Inktober 2020 Day 2 - “Wispy” Hair

“I want to reconcile the violence in your heart... I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask.” - Muse, Undisclosed Desires

POV: Ciaran looking up at Artorias looking down on her, waiting for him to say something but he’s being insufferably quiet with that pensive face, those furrowed brows, tight frown and- well, you get the point

[goodnight-goodknight]

Her voice. Her voice. He nearly goes to his knees at the sound of it, the way the faithful might be moved to tears by prayer. Her voice. The perpetual hissing that has come to occupy so much of his mind ceases all at once, his senses consumed by her face, her voice, her touch.

It's her. She's here.

His good hand reaches up, the cool steel of his gauntlet tracing along her cheek, over the curve of her jaw. It's all he can do not to disappear into the sensation, to lose himself so wholly in her presence as to approach incoherence again. He holds steady. She's here. She must get out. She cannot be consumed. Not here. Not now.

He is the Abysswalker. He will walk. He will lead her from this place. He will follow. He will stay with her all their days. He will. He will. He will.

He leans forward, pressing the cool of his forehead against hers, bending to meet her height the way he has so many, so many times before. Pitch tears collect along his cheeks, draw dark trails along his skin towards his chin. He bites back the sob of relief bubbling out of his throat.

"For the first time in so long, my heart beats," he murmurs. "It rattles and aches and threatens to escape my chest, but it beats again."

The hand on her face drops away from her jaw, finds her fingers, twines among them.

"Walk with me," he pleads. "You cannot die here. You cannot be here. We will leave this place, my heart. Together."

☉ @goodnight-goodknight // cont.

It was a risk beyond words to come here, into the black maw of the Abyss – but her death had already been assured. Artorias’ absence was her sentence, the axe hanging over her freckled neck, and she had chosen to run headlong toward its fall.

Despite the sunlight that danced in her bloodline, Ciaran was a creature of shadow. She had made her place in the dark, honourless when she must be, honourable when it served – and she had lived without love until him.

It was Artorias who had peeled her open, layer by gossamer layer, exposing her as if she were no more than a physalis in the cup of his gauntleted hands. She had been his, utterly, from the moment he revealed the velvet lining to her steel shell.

If he had chosen to kill her now, to rend her apart with that magnificent greatsword, she would not have resisted. Let him cleave her like a pomegranate, smash her like a fistful of red fruit, let her have known at last what it meant to die. There was no end she would have preferred to that – split apart by the very hand that held her heart in its fist, impaled by the one who had already pierced her in so many other ways.

It was the Abyss that kissed her now, thousands of cold, needling touches against her skin, open-mouthed and insidious. In the whites of her eyes, capillaries darkened into a black latticework, the same sickness that had claimed the wolf-knight seeping through her pores, pooling around the amber of her irises like a pitch-dark halo. Still she pressed on, unyielding, and the void itself would not bar her path.

Her hand travelled to her mask, the porcelain crown of her craft. A symbol of her efforts, the adornment of a killer who had earned her acclaim through blood, marking her as the highest of an order of hornets. Now, it was only a relic. Ciaran cast it away, letting it shatter behind her, her duty breaking into violent shards as she stepped forward. Let him see her, not the assassin. Let him see Ciaran, stripped bare of artifice and armour, as raw and open a wound as she had ever been.

Slowly, reverently, she took his gauntleted hand in hers – the one that hung mangled and limp, its strength stolen. Peering up at him, she felt the first scalding bloom of tears. It was enough to know that saw her, recognised her, loved her at this moment.

“I have returned to you,” Ciaran whispered fiercely, her voice as rich and dark as honeycomb, determined to wring every precious second from his moment of clarity. Amber eyes searched his face – that beautiful, ravaged face, still carrying the echo of the man she loved so completely. “Does your heart beat yet, my love?”

[pan-de-torao]

Well, here’s my OTP!! 

I like to think that they were friends for a long time, when they were just nameless silver knights (tho Ciaran was human first). 

Artorias loved Ciaran, but his honor as a knight said it was not the right thing. He struggled accepting and showing his feelings at first, over time he became more confident. This was a trigger of some fights between them but Ciaran didn’t want to push him or forced him to do anything. So she needed to go slowly, despite being really passionate when it was about loving her dear Artorias. 

Of course they kept their relationship in secret till the very end...at least Artorias.  

Ah, I’m missing a lot but I don’t know how to say it so, ask me if you wanna talk more about these two <3 <3 

[inexorablebloodmoon]

𝓒𝓲𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷, 𝓐𝓻𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓼, 𝓢𝓲𝓯

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I couldn’t resist posting this ajakskd beautiful pixel commission by K-A0S on DA. I really adore this AU of the three as Dark Souls characters. Will definitely be getting some more pixels of my OC’s in the later future! Thank you so much babe!

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[artoriasu]

Tag dump

[artoriasu]

My dear Ciaran…

The bee and the wolf.