Remnant Souls
"There is no path. Beyond the scope of light, beyond the reach of Dark... what could possibly await us? And yet we seek it, insatiably. Such is our fate." -Lord Aldia of Drangleic
Prologue
The weight of the disguise was bearing down on the emaciated man. Fearing death, he had cloaked himself in it. The hunger pangs and dehydration had sapped much of his strength, yet the process of removing himself from the debris and corpses he'd hidden among was not difficult. The man had not budged, slept, nor drawn more than the shallow, cautious breaths he was taking at present, since the arrival of the demon. He did not dare allow himself to fully process what he'd been so terrified of.
On his body was the accursed Dark Sign, a mark of one afflicted with the curse of the Undead. The curse allowed humans a cruel sort of immortality. Those branded may not remain dead, rather, they are condemned to wander the Earth, constantly reanimated upon death until their souls fade to embers. At each death, a fraction of the soul would escape, to be consumed by another, be it human or demon. This horrible fate was part of the gradual deterioration known as the Hollowing. A human who has completely Hollowed, is one who has lost all memory and purpose, and knows only violent hunger for the souls of others. While none in the current time had knowledge of the recurrence of this curse, a spare few throughout time had attempted to figure out the origin and nature of it, to very limited success.
The man wriggled himself from the hiding spot and began to survey his surroundings. He ducked behind a fallen support beam close to the opening where the church's double doors used to be. He could see that dawn was not far off, and with that, a diminishing chance of his not being spotted by beasts, demon or otherwise. The man darted from one partially intact residential building to the next, attempting to scavenge for food, but finding none. He had wandered the abandoned streets of the town, which had a name, but he couldn't remember what it had been. He carried on with this for a time before finding a butcher's knife left embedded in a rotting piece of unidentified animal carcass. He removed it and performed a rather feeble practice swing, casting off the stinking meat which had stuck to the blade.
"Yeah. Now try me..." the man sputtered weakly. His throat felt dryer than before, which he immediately decided he loathed. He looked over the edge of the knife and sighed. He then stared at the rotting meat for a few moments, wondering how much he could cut off and eat without becoming violently ill.
He fought with the idea until he spotted a puddle just beyond the butcher's counter. A bowl of water presumably left out for a house pet had recently tipped, leaving most of its contents on the ground. He lunged at the bowl and upended the remaining portion into gullet, and without a moment's hesitation, threw himself to the ground to try to drink from the puddle. His knees ground harshly into the floor as he pressed his mouth into the fluid, trying to suck up as much as he could. After several attempts at this, he noticed a mounting pain in his fingers which had grasped the knife. He was mystified at the deep lacerations until his addled mind replayed the event where he carelessly dove to the floor holding a butcher knife.
He stared, forlorn, at the exposed section of bone he could see in the cut to one of his fingers. His hand began to shake from the pain as he stretched out to retrieve the cleaver. He wrapped his uninjured fingers around the handle, and had barely started to feel its weight coming off the ground when the back of his neck was grasped so forcefully, he felt as if it lifted him from the ground. His eyes scarcely had time to widen in horror as the unseen, unheard creature tore out the muscles and vertebrae of his neck. The man could not scream. He felt himself succumbing to the injury, yet had a brief moment of clarity before his vision clouded. He elected not to look at his killer, but rather at the cleaver.
I knew you weren't going to do me any good.
Chapter 1
Aria focused her will into a glowing red ember in the palm of her left hand. Her right comfortably grasped a pale, curved sword which was a marked departure from the typical straight swords of the region. The fire she shaped into being was her use of Pyromancy; the ability to weave fire, creating devastating expressions of her knowledge and will, yet ancient as the world, shared by the spare few who knew of it. Her opponent, a two headed, four leg-tentacled demon which soaked the air around it in corrosive mist, creeped closer to her position. Its multiple, cavernous mouths chomped at her ineffectually. The demon was roughly 2 meters tall, with each of its four appendages alternating between slither-pushing and piercing the masonry directly in front of it, and pulling forward. Both of the heads were humanoid, yet the features were a nightmarish mockery of the Undead victims it had somehow amalgamated into itself.
Aria felt no particular remorse for the two unfortunate Undead who'd gotten engulfed by the creature, but would not completely ignore the novelty of the event. Though the faces of the demon retained most of the features of the Hollows it had melded with, she told herself that there was nothing in the abomination before her capable of being rescued or redeemed.
The demon unleashed from its mouths a hellish shrieking interposed with Aria's native language. She didn't bother listening, as she doubted demons had much to communicate about. She gauged the maximum reach of the creature's piercing front legs while jogging over the top of a large wooden table still covered in plates and other amenities. She kicked a maggot-ridden swine head from a plate at the monstrosity. It connected solidly with the smaller of the two heads, which caused it so much surprise that the shrieking briefly stopped. She couldn't suppress genuine amusement at this.
The beast lurched itself to the edge of the table she was moving towards, glaring hungrily with all four pale, lifeless eyes. She intentionally slowed her pace; as she'd predicted, one of the creature's piercing appendages darted towards her chest. She tucked her head and rolled the remaining distance between herself and the edge of the table, easily dodging the limb as it pierced into the thick wood of the table. As splinters erupted from the impact, she regained her footing behind and slightly to the left of the demon. She gripped the hilt of her enchanted utchigatana sword in both hands and, in an attack favoring blinding speed and technique over power, delivered her "love letter", as she liked to muse. The poisonous blood of the creature sprayed generously upon the ceiling and walls near it as the blade sheared through tendon and flesh. She did not decapitate it outright, as she'd not wanted to get quite that close to the mist surrounding it. The creature rocked back momentarily, its amorphous husk struggling to shake itself of the unexpectedly powerful attack of its prey.
The magical energy of her weapon channeled its power into the attack, bypassing some of the demon's inherent resistance to humanity's weaponry. One of the slithering back legs whipped at her, an attack she hadn't anticipated, yet was agile enough to evade. She'd avoiding the full, surprising amount of force from the blow by hopping to the side, though the crash of the oddly heavy limb hitting the floor nearby was enough to unbalance her.
The demon's blood spray did not touch her, but the withering mist began rapidly eroding her simple traveler's cloak, exposing a partially Hollowed female body. In the places where the material had burned through was rough, partially necrotic flesh, barely holding semblance of an Undead who hadn't gone utterly Hollow. Though she did not sustain much direct damage from the corrosive mist, the destruction of her long ago pilfered cloak brought about a new surge of blood lust towards the demon.
She elected to abandon her initial plan of cleaving the creature's heads off from behind before engulfing the shuddering mass in fire. She nimbly dodged her upper body away from the second rear tentacle as it lashed at her face, and responded in kind with a circular, defensive swipe of the sword. The blade sliced clean through the appendage and left a ropy, wriggling portion of it on the mason floor. The beast's muttering did not stop, but seemed to grow more focused, as if it was very important it said what it had to say before further destruction. The demon tried to twist its entire body around to face Aria, blindly and ineffectively swinging its piercing limbs in her general direction while trying to rotate. Aria ducked underneath these easily, and backed off from the range of the limbs.
Aria's focus had not been perfect, but the fire that manifested in her palm was finally ready for use. She did not need to speak incantations or perform any particular movements to use her power, as one would expect from a sorcerer. She harnessed the same power utilized eons ago by Chaos Witches. The myths of these Witches led one to believe that a truly gifted Pyromancer could immolate entire kingdoms at a whim. Though she doubted she could achieve that level of power, she hungered for hidden knowledge, and absorbed whatever technique she could study, as well as attempt her own variations.
Aria's hand clenched into a first and ignited the ember. With a devilish sneer, she pointed her now opened palm at the demon and unleashed a serpentine wave of fire, aiming at the heads, cauterizing the neck wound, and moving left to right, up and down, "coloring inside the lines". The demon's hide blackened, and the thinner, softer membranes began to form large, bursting blisters. The demon's hide erupted with multiple tentacles as many layers of skin were destroyed. The bulk of the creature's form quickly began to slough off, resulting in a truly offensive odor. Aria chided to herself that at least she didn't have much to regurgitate if the smell had overpowered her.
The demon's two heads began waving about, and the four eyes filled with what Aria assumed was malice. The shrieking turned into even less articulate guttural moan, and the demon's true form was exposed. What had appeared to be a fleshy lump with four appendages and two heads was, in fact, a very vine-like body interposed with the Undead within, that started and ended in places that Aria couldn't make sense of. With the demon's weight reduced and additional limbs freed, it took on a far more swift, pointedly murderous approach . Multiple limbs with even more odd and unpredictable patterns began flailing at her, and Aria could scarcely dodge one and slice off one tentacle before two more sliced through the air at her.
Aria had no trouble dodging and moving about the room to evade the most direct attacks of the frontal limbs, but the sheer number of additional limbs was more than she could handle at close range. She wasn't opposed to using a shield when the situation called for it, but generally relied upon swift maneuvers, precise attacks of opportunity, and devastating, yet longer-to-prepare Pyromancy techniques. Feeling pressed in by the rapid advance of the creature, she hooked a broken chair with her outstretched foot and drew it up as a makeshift shield. She was able to repel one limb that flew too close before the chair shattered. She baited it to charge at her while standing close to a large wooden spike constructed from a portion of a broken table.
Aria waited for her moment. The demon flailed more appendages at her than her eyes could track, but she remained focused on her goal. It charged as she wished it to, and she sidestepped again to allow it to impale itself on the spike, while rolling away, herself. The creature did manage to impale itself, which prompted Aria to dive in for another attack. The creature staggered unexpectedly, throwing off the rhythm of its sweeping and piercing blows, which Aria felt she had gained reasonable insight on, in regards to its awareness of her position. It appeared that the creature did not necessarily rely on the Undead for sight for sensing its environment, as it had appeared to be doing before. This was a realization Aria abhorred. One tentacle pierced her abdomen, another cut a deep gash across her chest and wrapped around her left arm.
"You get the hell off of me, this isn't that kind of scene!" Aria roared at the head with the damaged neck. She executed a backspin slice to at once attack the creature and dislodge the tentacle that had pierced her torso. Multiple portions of the creature's limbs fell off and began to wither on the floor, corroding in place instantly, but regrowing in seconds on the demon. The tentacle grasping her left arm tightened roughly, burning her skin with poison while keeping her bound. It tugged forward suddenly, and her body collided with that of the demon's. It dawned on her, reinforcing her current disappointment of how badly this fight had gone, that she didn't remember how far away, or how long it had been since she had been unceremoniously reanimated at a Bonfire, as Undead do. The Bonfires scattered across the land were mysterious altars of ash and bone, with a blackened sword pierced into the center of the pile.
She wrenched her left arm over the creature's burning limb, capturing as many other tentacles into her armpit as she could, and trying her best to not cry out in pain. With a desperate urgency, she swung her sword so swiftly that it decapitated nearly both heads.
The remaining Undead's head lolled off to the side, tenuously still attached to the torso, yet not killing the creature. The attack staggered the creature enough for the tentacle's grip on her left arm to loosen, which she promptly capitalized upon by slicing the tentacle off at the base. In equal parts fury and terror, she began hacking at the demon's ropy midsection, tearing off satisfying chunks with each blow. The creature's poisonous mist had all but disappeared when the outer husk burned away, but the bite of the corrosion began to wane. Aria noted that the ropy inner form was far less resilient. Another four tentacles sprung from the demon's body to replace the one which had previously grasped her arm, finding little trouble in hooking Aria in place again. Her left hand still freed for the moment, she reluctantly activated one of her more dangerous techniques. Slamming her hand upon her sternum and willing it do so caused the ember to enter her body.
A brilliant surge intense, aggressive colors came from the point of impact on her chest, and in the blink of an eye, her entire form was ablaze with the primeval fire of the world. The demon emitted an uncanny howl as Aria's mere presence brought immolation.
The demon flailed in pain as the fire overtook it. Most of its tentacles began flailing wildly, yet the demon made every effort to maintain its grasp on Aria, still bearing down to attempt to consume her with its remaining mouth, still needling into her torso and limbs relentlessly. Aria pressed her unconventional attack by reciprocating the demon's technique; she wrapped her arms around the frail creature and clasped her hands together behind it. It continued shrieking and flailing, its frantic limbs piercing through Aria's body as rapidly as it could summon the energy for. She removed one hand from the creature's backside to gently push away the mostly-disconnected head as it attempted to bite at her neck. "No, that's quite enough, thank you," she muttered. In seconds, the once bulky, plodding, mist demon had been reduced to ash and various ineffectual strands.
Aria's legs gave at that moment. She sank to her knees, utterly drained and using every last ounce of her will to not begin screaming in terror as her own fire consumed her.
Let it happen. Let it go. You'll come back. You have a purpose Aria! Don't go Hollow and forget! You burned that sack of shit to death, but that wasn't the right one. Don't FORGET! Azalet the BASTARD!
The sounds of the entire building erupting in flames echoed through the quiet streets of Aria's hometown, Leishen, as snow began to fall.