Quakes of a massive impact from somewhere in the room bring gusting dust everywhere. It pounds into the face of the warrior forcing struggle upon him to gain tread and steady his mind. He turns to find the source of the dizzying impact … it is as was warned: demon. Through the dust, a pear-shaped, molusc-like giant with the face of a deep water carnivore flaps its shrunken, decrepit, drakelike wings and lumberishly turns towards him. It holds … some large two-handed weapon. Its predator eyes find him. He runs … there's a door! He turns with a skid quickly toward it in full sprint as the beast swings its great weapon crashing it into columns, walls and the ground. Brick explodes filling the room with rubble and ruinous structural carnage. The warrior dives through the door just as again the hammer crashes down bringing rubble upon and over the doorway and collapsing it in upon itself.
Darkness. The warrior lay on the damp floor, his whole body in pain from the dive. The shallow corridor is seemingly protected now from the demon by the rubble. It's pitch dark and quiet. He keeps still for a moment feeling and assessing his pain and staring back into the darkness. The leather saved his skin from much injury but the impact has rattled his bones. His shoulder throbs. His left thigh pulses. The demons' paces still threaten. He must move.
Slowly the warrior lifts himself off the ground and as noiselessly as is maneuverable he allows the pebbles to slip from his chest piece and onto the floor. Expecting the beast to tear through the foundations of the walls, he waits and stares into the dark, quieting even his breath. These demons patrol the asylum he knows. Although he'd never seen one he had felt their steps and heard their haunting howls for whatever time his undead memory could recall in this place. It must have dropped from above him. The demon. Fell from the sky. Jumped through a hole in the roof of the worship hall. There is no other way it would have been able to enter into a room with doors of that size. He must ready himself now for not just the rabid Undead guards, but also for these giant demon spawns of the Abyss. It is said they lurk now in many places. Not just guarding the asylum. He'd seen one before in the forest. A goat headed blemish with arms the size of most men. They come from The Dark it is said. Their souls fused in the Abyss from the forsaken. The infinitum dead and their fragments as putty for their spines and flesh. Their whole demon being constructed to destroy with no other will. What horrors hunt him now?
… but nothing comes presently. No fells of giant hammer or … whatever weapon of Dark the demon wielded. No howls from the wretched fanged hole. Only the usual sounds of the Asylum and the demons intermittent pacings. The warrior carefully exhales and backs away. Something then comes to him as his mind replays the memory of the demon. Around the neck of the beast … he saw a key.
The dark, thin passageway gradually opens up into wider corridor lined on both sides with cramped holding cells and a dilapidated, crumbling rooftop above again revealing gray skies teased out in piecemeal. The warrior quickly explores each cell as he makes his way along the corridor. Checking … hoping. Then … in a cell to his left a manshaped figure lies facedown and motionless. Wearing the tattered garb of a hollow soldier it appears slain. On the ground next to it, the warrior finds a shortsword and shield. He immediately picks up the sword and dusts it off. His wishes granted with cherish. Though of nondescript quality the warriors' undead eyes brighten. The shield is very used and misshapen but of great value nonetheless. With these he can fight. He exits the small cell back to the corridor and follows till it breaks left and gives way to a gently rising stairwell leading up to a higher level of the asylum.
Emerging from the staircase he notices a broken portion of brick wall to his right serving as window into a small room. A heavily armored knight reclines there in amongst a pile of rubble. The space is a small enclosed room enveloped in a beam of light careening from a break in the ceiling high above. The warrior recognizes this knight immediately. It is the one he had seen looking down on him when the corpse with the twined key had fallen into his cell. Had this knight given it to him purposely? He appears … very badly injured. He is motionless and his armor is damaged and blackened in places. There appears no natural door to this small room but round the right flank corner he finds an opening to the cell through another larger break in the thick wall.
The warrior climbs in through the opening. The knight lifts his head slightly. "Oh, you ... You're no Hollow," he says. "The key … it worked eh? Ha! ... Yes, thank goodness you're here ... I need your help as my final moments have come... And regrettably, I have failed in my mission... But perhaps you can keep the torch lit... There is an old saying in my family..." the knights' voice to rises to a cadent respect "Thou who art Undead, art chosen... In thine exodus from the Undead Asylum, maketh pilgrimage to the land of Ancient Lords... When thou ringeth the Bell of Awakening, the fate of the Undead thou shalt know..." He pauses for a moment. "Well, now you know... Will you? There's no time. Just go… Leave this place… Go to Lordran… Find the bonfires. Kindle them as you like. It can be done. Gain strength in them. There is some comfort there however fleeting … in the bonfires as you know. There is some beauty there… Yes, you understand of course. Hopefully your mind is well enough to will for more… but we shall see." The knight pauses again as if gazing lovingly upon the warrior through his helm. Perhaps a fond memory as his one last thought. "But there's nothing for you here or otherwise… Nothing… What is there here?" He turns his head away from the warrior now and pauses again.
"Nothing to say eh? Has the curse turned your mind too far inward? The bonfire visions brought you so far into the afterlife that you won't cometh back? Sir come back!" he raises his voice to sudden desperation and turns his head back to the warrior. "No … I can see in your eyes there's more to you. Bah, you're right sir there is little to say anymore anyway! ... Is there? … What can undead have to converse about? Ha! No matter. Now go. And I can die with hope in my heart... Now I must bid farewell... I would hate to harm you after death... So, go now... And thank you..."
The knight dies his final undead death. The warrior knows the process. It will be some time before the affliction brings him to his new hollowed, unpredictable state. When it does though, this knight could be a formidable hollow if really of Astoran officer stock.
The land of Ancient Lords... The Bell of Awakening … Fate of the Undead. Is it all the ramblings of a forlorn, undead madman a halfshade from hollowed? The warrior cares not. Haste calls…