I am surrounded by cold stone and weather beaten iron. My face is as close to outside as it can be, pressed to the bars of the window. I inhale the chill and savor the scents of damp earth and frozen mountains. It is often clouded up here, but now rays of sunlight pierce through the thick blankets in brilliant golden spears. Since the dawn I have been captivated by its inspiring magnificence, its soft warmth, its sacred radiance. Night should have fallen days ago, but the dark has no power over such a masterful force.
I realize my hands are stuck, frozen to the bars, such that I cannot uncurl them. I must have gotten lost gazing at the sun. Fingers are locked, joints barely stir. I focus on forcing my hands to obey, exerting as much energy into them as I can summon, but they still refuse to move. My fingertips are deadened, and my palms are on the way there. A foolish mistake, but I became Undead for a reason.
At first, I give them only a testing yank or two. They don't move, and I yank again, hard. The pinky and ring fingers of my left hand crack. With a final good tug they snap off . It appears I have my solution.
My fingers will reform.
I find my sword in a dank, waterlogged cell. It's been far too long since it hung by my side. Gingerly, I wrap my mangled hands around it and savor its comforting weight.
Heavy, I notice, it's heavier than it used to be. I'm heavier than I used to be.
I know that, but I don't remember how it used to be. How I used to be.
"I am...I…" My mind began flitting around through what remained of my memory. A very distinct image outshone all those competing for my attention.
"The...the sun...yes, I...I will become it. I am the sun. I am the sun."
There is a groan behind me, and the sound of bare feet slapping the stone. I turn to see a hollow with the remnants of a broken blade clutched in a scrawny, raw-pink hand. It shakily brings its arm up and swings downward in an obvious series of barely coordinated movements. I slap its attack aside easily and grip the hilt of my longsword with both hands to deliver the killing blow: a thrust through its rotted sternum.
The hollow sinks further onto my blade, and I stare into the black pits of its eyes. They are as vacant as its mind. There is naught left within but endless dark. It is no longer even the remnant of a person, just an empty, shriveled vessel.
I grip the hollow's boney shoulder to steady it, overcome with grief for the person it once was. This harsh place had broken it, and it would not go on to have a chance at winning its humanity back. It would not die with dignity. Perhaps it would never see light again.
I lay it down, sliding it off my blade. When I turn my back on the corpse, I drop my blade and find my hands reaching to grip my thick tunic of their own accord. I look down at the cloth, and find a bright, shining sun staring back.
That's right. I remember. I remember.
The Asylum's Guardian swings faster than I had anticipated.
While it seems most of my cuts successfully wound it, the demon only moves more swiftly and strikes more ferociously. I manage to land a well-placed thrust in its lower belly, my sword sliding back out with near no resistance. An intestine the width of my head slips out of the hole, along with a fountain of blackened blood. Screaming with anguish, the demon swings the butt of its hammer near me erratically in an attempt to push me away, and I find myself backstepping to avoid it of my own volition.
The Guardian's great hammer rushes just over my head and crashes deafeningly into the stone tile of the floor behind me as I narrowly duck under it. Aiming for the demon's hamstring, I draw a slicing cut across the back of its leg. Before I can finish, it knocks me flat on my back as it leaps above me, barely keeping its enormous body in the air on absurdly tiny wings. I suck in a deep breath and claw desperately at the ground, scrambling to remove myself from the demon's path just as its wings halt and it drops heavily to the floor.
Just barely, I escape. My legs are trembling, but I urge myself forward and ignore the burning exhaustion the effort causes. The demon turns to face me, but I refuse to allow that to discourage me. Keeping close to its belly, I circle it while it demolishes a pillar in an attempt to crush me. I have it, I think, and I channel all of my remaining strength into yet another horizontal slash to the back of its leg.
The demon shrieks, turns to me and swats me away with the butt of its weapon. My back hits the wall, ears ringing, head lolling forward, body slack. That last strike hadn't been the end of it after all. I try to move out of the way, unable to summon the strength.
The great hammer breaks my body against unyielding stone.
It's dark.
My fingers are back. My hands...crack...no, that was a long time ago. Ages ago. Ages, ages, ages. I don't know. My fingers are back. My…cold. They froze, and now they're back and it's been ages and I don't know. I don't remember. It's cold.
A rat scuttles nearby, and I must smell like a corpse but I can no longer tell.
My skin rotted away long ago.
Lightning-quick, I snatch up the rat and it squeals, rakes and bites at my hands. It's been a long time. I bring it to my mouth as it writhes desperately in my grasp, and my teeth tear through its upper-half. It's squishy, stringy in my teeth, and it spatters. I absorb its souls, and it alleviates my pain.
It's been ages.
A looming, armored giant of a man stands with his back to me. Talisman in hand, sword in the other, I sit still for a moment longer observing him.
This one is cruel. I had seen him punishing wandering hollows with extreme violence, slicing and cutting and stomping until there was naught but bloody, fleshy pulp and bits of bone. On occasion, he even entered the cells of the noisier prisoners and abused them such as to permanently quiet them for fear of incurring his fickle wrath.
When I find myself stuck in contemplation, a great beam of golden light appears, casting itself upon the knight and bathing him and the cold stone surrounding us in soft warmth.
An insistent prickle in the back of my mind. I look down at my tunic, and find the sigil of the sun.
No, I've been in here far too long. I have something...something I must do.
Stepping out from my hiding place, I lift the talisman above my shoulder and conjure a lightning spear.
As fate would have it, the black knight had been guarding a humanity sprite. The bonfire just before the gate to the Guardian allows me to use it to regain my living (Undead) body, and restores my sanity. I have found my shield and estus flask, completing my previously scattered gear again at last.
For a moment, I allow myself to study the sigil on the face on my round, iron shield. I trace the orange, outer flames that stretch proudly to the edges. If I had not trained myself to look to the symbol that represented my inspiration when I found myself lost, I would not be here now.
I stand. Everything has fallen together for this moment. The demon before me, the sun at my back, my full strength returned. Clenching my talisman in one hand, I take in a steadying breath and approach the gate.
I would not fail again. Not when my journey still had yet to begin.
When I enter the great hall, the demon strides toward me as quickly as its fat legs allow, hammer held aloft. I deepen my stance and inch forward, watching for the broad swing I know is coming. Predictably, it does, and I take a massive leaping step toward the guardian, stooping my head to avoid the enormous lump of metal crashing into the stone floor behind me.
Flying chunks of tile clink off of my iron armor and I ignore them as I immediately take the most direct route to the demon's rear. As I pass its heel, I cut deep into the back and draw it across to pull the blade out. When I slice its hamstring, the demon is in mid-stride with the opposite foot in the air, which in turn causes the thing to roar in outraged shock and fall on its side.
I end up on the other side of the room after having taken a running leap quickly out of harm's way, the beast groaning and crying in agony. The gate to my freedom, and to my path, stands at my back. I have only to open it.
I raise my talisman once more. An enormous, potent spear of flashing golden lightning materializes within my grasp, and the demon groans painfully as I take aim for it's head.
When the golden spear hits its mark, the guardian's head splits in two.
For the first time since my capture and imprisonment, I freely walk the grounds outside the asylum. There are no walls to break the gentle, cold breeze from the mountains, no broken ceilings to hinder my view of the magnificent celestial body above, and the air holds none of the deranged, insane babble or deathly croaking of hollows.
I walk slowly, savoring my triumph at long last.
I am the one who will restore true life and natural death to the world when Lord Gwyn finally burns away. I am Solaire of Astora.