The rising sun wasn't quite enough to ward off the chill of an early autumnal Astoran morning, even in the city.
Brynn wrapped the scarf more tightly around her face as she padded down a darkened alley, the elaborate stone structures of the wealthy district on either side blocking out the sunlight. Two other pairs of soft footsteps echoed her own, stopping just behind her, though the untrained ear would've overlooked them. The woman held out an open palm, signaling the silent group of thieves to halt at the corner.
Earlier that day, her guild had received a tip on the upcoming arrival of a wealthy merchant of Zena, a far-off, foreign land with unusual customs and even more unusual people. This decadently garbed man would surely have some incredibly valuable trinkets and information for them.
Or rather, that was the half-truth Brynn had told her guild-mates.
"Hey, s'at 'im?" One of her comrades, Scraper, spoke up in a whisper. He was relatively new to the Guild.
"Shut up! Damn fool, you'll get us caught before we've started." Hushed a younger man, going by the name "Chaos". He always insisted his alias was "Omega Chaos" when his fellow guild members shortened it, but no one paid much mind.
"Yea it's him, now shut yer damn mouths." Brynn replied in a low tone, watching as the man in exotic, brightly colored and gold-trimmed garb made his way closer. He had a light and carefree gait, whistling a chipper tune, but something about him was off.
No, everything about him had always been off. Brynn recalled, for the hundred-thousandth time, the day the strange merchant arrived at her parents' farm nearly a decade past. He'd been warm enough in demeanor to assuage doubt as to his intentions, but a tad too transparent in his condescension toward the farmers. When Brynn's parents turned down his offer to buy their land, all that warmth turned to frost. She'd never seen him again, but the farm fell to ruin and a strange illness claimed her mother and father's lives all within a matter of months afterward. It was too timely to have been a coincidence.
Dunno what he's so happy about after everythin' he's done, Brynn seethed as she watched him make his way down the road, Maybe it's because he's so bloody rich. Prob'ly shat in a golden chamber pot this morning. His type don't have a conscience to speak of.
Just then, Brynn was broken from her resentful musings when, without warning, the man from Zena turned sharply and darted into the entrance to the aqueduct.
"Shite", she hissed, "After 'im!"
The group of thieves flew into the tunnels, steps careful so as not to slip on the wet stone. Somehow, the merchant had nearly outpaced them, strange for someone who probably sat on his ass while he made his living.
The man from Zena had halted near a wall a fair distance away, and was pulling something from a pouch at his belt. Seeing that he had finally come to a stop, Scraper and Chaos sped up to close in on him. They seemed eager to catch their quarry and claim the prize, but Brynn couldn't help but feel anxious. This man was no overconfident fool.
What's he got there? The back of her neck prickled with warning, but she could see no weapon in the merchant's grasp. It was small, and the shine of silver indicated it could be some sort of jewelry or device.
But it didn't feel like a weapon, or any sort of shiny trinket. It felt like a presence.
As Brynn watched, the thing in the merchant's palm began to emit a dark pull, as if sucking the very light out of the tunnel. Just before the man from Zena, a black pit formed which seemed to quickly gain an intimidating mass. An odious phantasm took shape within it: long and thin, sharp with spines and filled with invisible teeth, and covered with feathery tendrils like a coat of ragged fur. But when the creature opened its eyes, the rest of it seemed a mere chilling backdrop. Slitted pupils with the depth of the abyss, surrounded with hideously bright irises, filled with unearthly awareness.
Brynn felt her stomach drop, cold with terror. Her companions seemed to be in a similar rut, staring wide-eyed at the beastly creature that had materialized before them. While Chaos gaped, mouth moving but forming no words, Scraper pulled himself together enough to stumble backwards. His back struck a pillar, but he merely slid desperately around it and clumsily made a hasty retreat.
"Get back- you!" Chaos finally spat, and fired a crossbow bolt into the dark beast as it took a step toward him. With a roar that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once, the monster leaped on him with speed Brynn's eyes could hardly follow. Chaos hadn't even the time to scream before he was halfway swallowed whole.
Three things were then made abundantly clear: the thing was angry, it was hungry, and Brynn would not get out of this alive.
.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
There aren't many things in Lordran uglier than the demon who guards the Undead Asylum. The thing was so large and bulbous that every step that it took sent shockwaves down its rolls of abnormal fat, crushing the already flimsy stonework of the asylum's courtyard. As if that wasn't boisterous enough the demon lazily tossed its head back and laughed, sending an echo up the parapets of the enclosed arena that it had cleverly formed.
While the demon was celebrating what would be its fifth victory in a row, Jeigh laid in a pool of his own blood. He wasn't the smartest cleric in the world, nor was he the most talented that Astora had ever birthed, but he was well aware of two things: his skin looked like rotted meat and he wasn't able to die.
Compared to the demon Jeigh was ten times smaller, slower, and clumsier. However, Jeigh had a hidden blessing that acted as a weight in his previous life. A technique so unique that the best of heros would never dare to master it. Most would call it a curse, but unbeknownst to Jeigh this defining trait would be his key journeying further into undeath.
Jeigh was extremely dumb. Perhaps even - the dumbest.
Every time he died, Jeigh awoke in front of a curious bonfire. Its fire was seemingly unending and it appeared to be pierced down the middle by a dual-coiled sword. The enclosed plaza that he'd found himself in provided him two options: back or forward. Behind him was a ladder to a small sewer and the prison cell that he'd been trapped in previously. Going back simply wasn't an option. In front of him was a sizeable double-door that took all of his strength to move. On the other side of that door was the courtyard of death.
When Jeigh first encountered the demon he was too afraid to do anything and he was promptly crushed by its rock on a stick. When he confronted the demon for the second time he attempted to stick it with a broken sword that he'd found on the floor, but the demon simply turned him into a puddle with its foot. On his third attempt he used his surroundings to his advantage, dipping through obstacles such as vases and rubble in an attempt to tire the demon out. He inevitably just made himself tired, and was swiftly disposed of.
During his fourth attempt he noticed something peculiar. As he was in the middle of faking a heart attack he managed to spot an open doorway in the furthest corner of the courtyard. It wasn't the way out, but it was certainly a way. Plus, the exit was a colossal metal door that the demon zealously stood in front of at all times. Even if he were to kill the demon, there was no way he was going to be able to open the damned thing.
So here he stood - the fifth time's the charm. Only, he wasn't standing. He was on the floor, bleeding. The demon had decided to simply charge him this time, slamming its great hammer onto the floor directly in front of Jeigh. Stone shrapnel paraded his chest and tore his lungs to shreds. Not only was he dying, but he was dying slowly.
The sentinel lazily tilted its head back and let loose an obnoxious guffaw. Jeigh took note of the stag-like horns poking out of its skull, its ironically small but functional demonic wings, and the boney spikes that stuck out of its flesh in random places. It would be torture, but he actually felt like he could move. He just needed an opportunity. As he had done with many of his problems in the past, he sent his thoughts and prayers to the gods.
In that moment the demon placed its colossal weapon onto the floor and turned around. Jeigh was flabbergasted. The two acted in unison; as he stood the demon bent over to pick something up. Jeigh was already sprinting before the monster turned around. He took a second to glance at the demon and performed a double take because he couldn't believe his eyes. The demon was holding his broken sword between two of its fingers. The damned thing had been planning to kill him with his own, shitty weapon.
The Asylum Demon roared and charged towards the open doorway, flinging the rusty hunk of crap at Jeigh in pure spite. A grated door slammed into the ground behind him as Jeigh dove into the darkness. He heard a loud clunk as the sword collided with the rusted barrier. Although he couldn't see a thing, he continued to hear pounding and shrieking as the beast on the other side of the door attempted to unhinge the object. Dust began to fall from the ceiling and loud cracks of stone resounded all around Jeigh. After a while the monster ceased its tantrum, likely attempting to avoid destroying the already ruined asylum.
Jeigh navigated the darkness, but did not have to go too far. The dark hallway opened up into a small, flooded room that was illuminated by another doorway opening up to the outside. One of those peculiar bonfires sat on an elevated, deliberate platform. Jeigh collapsed in front of it as a cacophony of horrid sounds escaped from his throat.
He approached a puddle of water and attempted to use it to get the taste of blood out of his mouth. Before he could put any of it into his mouth, the previously potent, rusty taste went away. Jeigh found himself taken aback. In fact he felt great, as if he hadn't just been attacked by a maniacal demon. He turned to the bonfire, the only possible source of his miraculous recovery.
"Thank Gwyn," he whispered.
The cleric collected himself and moved towards the opening on the other end of the small confine. He stuck his head out and spotted another person standing on the opposite end of a long, but ceilingless hall. Rubble and weapons of all kinds littered the floor. Jeigh assumed that the demon was likely the cause of the asylum's current state of disrepair. He couldn't get a gauge on what the person looked like, their features seemed very bland from a distance. All he could gather was that they were standing at a strange angle.
He began to scan the floor, searching for a weapon that he could feasibly use to defend himself. Unexpectedly, an arrow slammed into the brickwork beside him.
Jeigh looked down the hall and yelled, "what'n tarnation is yer problem!?"
He didn't receive the answer he was expecting and had to promptly duck his head behind the wall to avoid another, more accurate arrow. At this point, Jeigh knew that if he were to die he would likely appear at the bonfire once again. He played around with the idea of just charging down the hall and figured that an arrow probably wouldn't hurt as badly as the hammer of a giant demon.
He nodded to himself and pivoted from his butt to his feet. He made it three steps into the hallway before he tripped on a sizeable brick and his face collided with the muddy floor. Fortunately his bad luck turned out to be quite the opposite. His sudden collapse caused him to avoid what would have been a well aimed arrow.
"Darn it!" he spat.
Jeigh began to realize how far he was from the figure at the end of the hall. He'd surely be hit by two, maybe three arrows if he were to try to sprint at his foe. He placed his hands into the mud but found that they were on a sort of uneven slab. Jeigh looked down to see why he couldn't just push himself up and a smile found its way onto his face.
Down the hallway, the archer drew an arrow from a quiver that flimsily laid above its rear. It didn't know why it was guarding this hallway. It once had a meaningful purpose, but as the years of undeath went by all of what once was ceased to be. Any form of humanity or aspiration that the thing had once possessed was gone. It was a shell of its former, undead self, a hollow.
But in that moment the hollow experienced a small spark of worry as Jeigh rose from the floor with a shit-eating grin on his face and a wooden kite shield in his fingers. The hollow loosed an arrow at his target, but the projectile was swiftly blocked. The loud thunks of arrow after arrow resounded as Jeigh approached his opponent, who he began to realize was another undead just like himself; only it didn't wear any clothes other than the quiver hanging from a strap around its waist.
Jeigh paused as he stepped on what he assumed would be a simple enough weapon - a dagger. He didn't have to stop for long to recover it and soon he was able to close the distance. He was stunned for a second when the thing turned around and performed the laziest escape he'd ever seen. It ran extremely slowly, likely due to the state of decay that its body was in. Jeigh sprinted to catch up with it, turning into a straight stairwell at the end of the hallway.
The hollow arrived at the end of a short hall on top of stairwell and swung around to meet its foe. Jeigh approached slowly, his shield in front of him at all times. The cleric began to speak.
"Look I'm willin' tuh let bygones be bygones, yuh obviously look like somethin's wrong with yuh," he said.
The archer didn't understand a single word that Jeigh spoke. As the cleric continued to talk, the hollow attempted to make sense of the words. It knew exactly what he was saying, but it couldn't connect any of it in its mind. It did the only thing that it still knew how to do. It reached for an arrow and attempted to knock it.
Jeigh easily pushed the bow out of the way and the arrow clanged to the floor. This process repeated several times until the hollow completely ran out of ammunition. Jeigh watched in bewilderment as the hollow then began to try to scoop the arrows up off the floor and put them back into its quiver. A couple minutes passed and its quiver neared full capacity. It turned to Jeigh and tilted its head, as if Jeigh hadn't been standing there the entire time.
As it knocked another arrow, Jeigh said, "Darn it. Fine!"
Jeigh slammed his shield into the hollow and watched the longbow fly out of its decrepit hands. He hesitated when he brought his dagger up, but he felt that if he didn't kill the archer then it would continue to go after him. He begrudgingly stabbed the hollow in the chest.
The dagger sunk into the hollows chest, but the undead barely budged. It looked at Jeigh with a blank expression and let out an aggressive growl. Jeigh tried to take the dagger out of the hollow, but found that it was quite difficult. The hollow stumbled onto Jeigh and the both of them fell to the floor. Jeigh was cushioned by the thick wool of his monk-like robes and quickly found himself on top of his opponent. He used his legs to rip the dagger out of the hollows chest, taking a large chunk of flesh and a couple of ribs out with it.
The hollow struggled on the floor for a little while longer, but it eventually went still. Jeigh looked at the dagger, the blood on his hands, and the hole in the hollows chest. This didn't feel like killing a cow or a pig at all. In fact, it made Jeigh feel horrible. He dropped to his knees and did what he felt would be right in the moment; he began to pray.
"Don't waste your breath, cleric."
The voice called from outside of the hallway, beyond the opening in front of Jeigh. He ignored it and continued to say the silent prayer.
The voice continued, "That thing may be an undead like you and me, but it went hollow long ago."
Jeigh rose and walked outside to find himself on a wall overlooking the courtyard with the first bonfire that he'd encountered. In front of him was another prison cell, similar to the one that he'd been in. The cleric peered into the slanted, rusty door of the cell and spotted a knight laying in a pile of rubble.
The knight appeared to be a complete mess. His plated armor was dented in many places and blood was dripping from the chainmail underneath his gear.
"Gwyn be damned, wish I had mah talisman. I'd be able t'help yuh get back up," Jeigh said.
Grunting, the knight slowly turned his head to Jeigh and asked, "Where are you from?"
Jeigh replied, "Astora. Born on a farm 'n raised 'n a church."
The man nodded as if he knew exactly what Jeigh was going to say before he even spoke.
"I'm Oscar, a knight of Astora. I left after our homeland was decimated by a mysterious demon and came here to fulfill an ancient undead prophecy," the knight claimed with a hint of pride in his pained voice. "But as you can see, I am unfit for it."
Jeigh scanned the prison while Oscar spoke and found that the door to the knight's cell was unhinged. It took some effort, but Jeigh managed to lift the door out of the way and threw it behind him, flinching as it slammed into the stone floor. The cleric cleared a path through a pile of rubble and sat beside the knight.
"What're yuh talkin 'bout?" Jeigh said. "I was 'n Astora uh few days ago, everythin's fine."
Oscar removed his helmet and continued, "Astora and many of the other human kingdoms fell years ago."
Jeigh didn't believe Oscar, everything he was saying sounded like nonsense. Though, earlier that day he'd faced off against a demon. Those weren't supposed to be real, either.
"'N how's that s'pposed tuh explain why I remember it like it happened yesterday?" Jeigh responded.
Oscar thought about explaining every intricacy of the curse to Jeigh, but he could feel his life slipping away as his blood pooled onto the bricks beneath him. Additionally, there was no way that this simple farmer was ever going to be able to fully grasp what was going on.
"Look, just don't think about it," Oscar said. "The Curse of the Undead works in strange ways. Many of the things that you see in Lordran are going to be very convoluted."
"None of that is important," Oscar stated before Jeigh could reply. "I'll be dead and then hollow shortly after that. Go find the Bells of Awakening, ring them, and fulfill the prophecy."
Jeigh found the knight's sword, shield, and a mysterious glowing flask in the corner of the room.
"What's this?" Jeigh asked.
Oscar began to whisper now, his life slipping away. "An Estus Flask. We use those to heal our wounds. Take it, take everything from me before you leave. It will all aide you."
Jeigh squinted at Oscar and said, "Why don't yuh just drink it?"
Oscar squeezed a weak laugh out of his chest. He replied, "I'm unfit for this mission. I couldn't even defeat the demon out there in single combat."
"Yuh think that somethin' that big could be beat by somethin' as small as us by ourselves?" Jeigh exclaimed. "'N here I thought I was dumb."
The knight's face turned red, and not from all of the blood that he was losing. His honor had just been thrown into the mud and he figured that if he had the strength to run the mouthy cleric through, he would have.
"Look," Jeigh continued as he knelt by Oscar. "Way I see it, Gwyn brought us back round the same time fer a reason. How're yuh gunna believe in prophecy when yuh ain't even willin' to see it all through?"
Oscar felt deep embarrassment and some resentment towards Jeigh, but also… hope?
Jeigh held the flask to Oscar's lips and commanded him, "drink."