The enchanted ship took them to an isolated island that appeared on no map. Reaching it was only possible through knowledge of its position by the stars. Fortunately, as in Lordran before, Drangleic and its conquered lands were frozen in time. The stars and a pale moon hung still above the forbidden island, the final destination for those who first fell to the Curse. The deliberately Lost Bastille.
They fought through Undead hounds, fallen knights, and the mummified gaolers themselves. Three lanky golems the height of two men fell before them, then a veritable army of squat ones that only reached the knee. To finish the onslaught of animate inanimate objects, a flock (or a pack, perhaps) of gargoyles attacked them atop the roof of the tower where the princess of Venn was once held captive to prevent her elopement with the Prince of Alken.
"Back in the day, we thought the belltowers were going to be waaaay more important and interesting, but they were just a halfassed throwback in the end," Lex complained.
They slew an invading spirit and spoke with a mad smith. All the while, the prophet pointed out strange details. For example:
"Someone left all this black powder lying around basically everywhere. Why? They're not doing any excavation or demolition, except the Iron King. I kind of feel like they were going to have guns but then cut them because Loadborne."
and
"Notice how all the gaolers are mummified? It's possible that they all had their flesh burnt off or that they were fully prepared to hollow in their line of duty. We'll never know, but that pyromancy you saw in mind. It's important to understanding the Old One."
That was, of course, the reason why they had come. The many Bearers of the Curse were subtly drawn toward the Great Souls, but the prophet knew exactly where to find the one here. It was obvious, in retrospect. While the Princess' tower was in the heart of the fortifications, there was another tower that stood away from it, in its shadow. While likewise ruined, the bulk of its walls were intact, and they stretched down to the sea far below.
It was guarded by still more knight-soldiers, and in its flooded depths, unspeakable monsters lurked. The normally agile swordswoman had difficulty maneuvering through the knee-deep mire, but the cleric simply laughed and passed through it as if it weren't there at all.
"Why would they not include this effect in any form?" he complained jadedly as he whisked around one of the beasts and tore open its patchwork flesh. "If I'd known this would have happened, I've have brought a whole bunch of Rusted Iron Rings, because Drangleic needs them like I need a bath right now. This is gross."
"Why is the ring rusted?"
"Part of the enchantment involves keeping them submerged in water. Since the effect requires the magical properties of iron as a nullifier, that means you end up with an awful, crusty, rusted ring. You can't even file it off since that ruins the enchantment. We actually artificially age them to wear them down and keep anyone from getting tetanus."
"And you say you have many of these?"
"Oh, yeah. Like, magic items were generally dwindling even in my time. The various rulers of Light always cause a renaissance, but as you can see, things tend to get lost over time. Since I stopped the Curse, though, we're starting production again. My sword was actually the first new magic item produced in Izalith since it exploded and everyone turned into giant monsters."
"How did you escape such a fate?"
"That was several hundred years before I showed up. I offered my services at first but then eventually married into the royal family. I mean, there aren't a whole lot of suitors for a princess who's that attached to a pet."
Lucatiel actually chuckled that time.
"So in order, the husbands are a skeleton, a hedonist, a cactus, and a swamp hermit. The princesses pretty much abandoned all pretensions of nobility. You can't rebuild a kingdom when the entire population is royalty you can count on one hand."
"That sounds… almost like a dream. There was only one way up in Mirrah. Join the Order and prove yourself in battle. I was raised to wield a sword from birth. Life was hard, but I never gave it a second thought.
I had swift success on the battlefield, and quickly attained respectable stature. And then I…"
"Don't feel bad. My first death was getting impaled and then lifted off the ground so the serrated blade dug further and further into my guts. I was trying to talk my way out of a fight, and it backfired. And that's the story of how I met my wife."
While Lucatiel tried to think of a retort, another of the exploding mummies shuffled toward them, and they were forced to cut the conversation short. Beyond the gate was a second tower set apart. A narrow stone bridge connected the two, the waves lapping at either side, while jagged pillars of sea salt surrounded the path like teeth. Ahead lay the fog gate, but on either side was a spiral stair leading to a cell door. Lucatiel waited by the fog, setting her mind toward the fight ahead while Lex entered one cell, then the other, setting fire to iron gutters filled with pitch.
When they entered the fog, they found a massive open room. The whole chamber was circular, ancient and rotten banners hanging from the walls as if in a coliseum. More concerning were the countless chain manacles hanging from the ceiling like the branches of a willow. Still more chains traced along the floor like roots, weaving around each other and the indecipherable runic text scorched onto the stone. Against the far door sat a prisoner wrapped in tatters, hands bound, and head burdened with an iron mask.
Lucatiel shuddered as the frail humanity in her reacted to the presence of the Old One and the immense Flame it carried. The blood rushed to her head, and her vision swam.
"This effect is stupid and has no lore basis. I bet they were demoing it to see if people would like it before deciding whether to put it in Bloodborne."
The prisoner looked up lazily. Something was crawling on the mask. Bug and prisoner alike paused. There was a tremendous inhuman chirp, then the shriek of a woman hoarse with wrath. The bug slithered into one of the mask's eye holes. The prisoner grunted with pain as it did so, but she remained utterly focused on Lex.
"Ah, crap. Lucatiel, get ready."
He waved her to one side and took a step forward.
"Priestess of Eleum Loyce! It's not what it looks like! I can take you back! The Silent Oracle is suppressing the Chaos even now! We can free the Ivory King!"
The shriek was like the hissing of a thousand insect wings: "LIAR!"
"I did not travel centuries into the future to be backsassed, young lady! Time for Grandpa to introduce you to some good, old-fashioned, corporeal punishment!"
Lucatiel didn't wait for her companion to finish boasting. He was far more powerful than her and had the immense tactical advantage of foreknowledge. Though the prisoner's hands were bound by a pillory, that hardly seemed to weaken her grip on the massive claymore longer than even the impressive height of an Old One. The monster shrieked again, whipping its sword with enough force to extinguish the lamps behind it. The braziers fortunately kept the room lit, and it even seemed that the Old One shied away from the light.
The hesitation lasted hardly a moment. The prisoner, the so-called priestess, seemed just as dangerous with a blade as her counterpart. She raised the long blade into a lunging pose while the prophet let his heavy saber rest at his side. The Old One feinted a charge but quickly jerked to one side, using her more-than-human body to generate an enormous amount of torque. The hammering blow came down on Lex's undefended left.
With unexpected flexibility, the prophet bent his body backward and slid into the diagonal slash to widen his stance, just barely avoiding the blade while keeping his balance. Instead of striking back, he used the momentum of his pivoting body to spin up and around, hooking the prisoner's neck and hurling her to the ground with the force of her own blow.
"Yeah! So this is what it feels like to be Kirk!"
That window was all Lucatiel needed. She abandoned her cautious pacing and stabbed at the Old One's legs, combining the brute weight of her greatsword with her refined fencing technique to shred the monster's calves. It shrieked and shuddered, but she continued the onslaught with grim resolve.
"No, get back!"
As she withdrew her blade from the final strike, the tip was red-hot. As the pair watched, smoke trailed from the Old One's wounds, erasing them as it dissipated.
"This is different," Lex said to Lucatiel quickly. "She's not supposed to use her powers."
The prisoner beat the concrete floor furiously, then bashed at her mask with the edge of the pillory.
"I see," the prophet continued. "She doesn't want to. She normally suppresses them, but she's too emotional right now."
"Her life is at risk. What reason would she have for that?"
"Well. Suppressing what that power created destroyed her whole kingdom in exchange for protecting the rest of the world. For now."
"Hold on. She can't suppress this world-endangering power if she's emotional, and you keep taunting her?"
"Relax. It's just an echo of what came before."
They stepped away from one another as the prisoner rose again, a faint glossolalia echoing from inside the mask. She looked about the chamber, turning her head limply, as if it might fall off. Suddenly, it snapped back in a blur of motion as she lunged forward. Her immense reach allowed her to strike at both of them with a wild sweep that bent her body like a reed. Lucatiel simply deflected the unbalanced blow with her steady shield, and it missed Lex completely.
The prophet rushed in, but the Old One's body whipped back, her bones audibly snapping under the strain. Unfortunately, the unexpected attack succeeded in dealing more damage to its intended target than the backlash. The prisoner writhed in pain as its shattered body realigned, but Lex had ragdolled across the chamber. His blood was splattered all across the concrete floor, but even the smallest drop was melting the concrete.
"What in the- Lex, are you all right?"
Lucatiel quickly moved between the healing Old One and the fallen prophet.
"I'm hot-blooded, check it and see! I've got a fever of a hundred and three! Come on, baby-!"
"I'll take that for a yes!"
The swordswoman hazarded a glance to the floor. As wisps of smoke rose from her companion's blood, she wondered if turning her back to him was a good idea. She had little time to mull it over as the Old One charged madly, intent on running through both of them. Lucatiel caught the greatsword on the inner rim of her shield, and though the blow nearly took her off her feet, it sent the enormous weapon far off course. She was a veteran combatant; seeing Lex throw the enemy off-balance once was all she needed.
A swift lunge into the left armpit, and the monster's power was halved. The knight quickly withdrew her sword before the burning blood could cause any harm and ducked under a retaliatory swing. She kept close – though her sword was long, her foe's was longer. While the Old One could attack with impossible speed, the close distance kept the prisoner from bringing all her power to bear. Of course, the Old One retreated in a single powerful leap, so Lucatiel was forced to hold back and take a defensive stance.
The absurdly long greatsword flashed overhead like a shooting star. Lucatiel blocked it, but yelped in pain as the force of the blow shattered her arm. Her shield clattered to the ground uselessly even as the Old One raised her sword again.
"Lucatiel!"
There was a sudden impact, and the knight found herself whizzing through the air. She arced away from and past the prisoner. Just as quickly, she began to approach again from behind. As she built up speed, she ran her own sword through the Old One's back. Rushing past the monster was an attack in itself, as the force tore the sword away violently in the knight's iron grip.
Lucatiel skidded to her feet as Lex kicked a jet of flame behind him, revolving faster and faster on one of the hanging chains. Magma poured from the Old One's side as she stood still, as if stunned.
"Use it or lose it, priestess!" Lex yelled. "Speaking of which, I'm going to lose my lunch if I keep this up."
He angled high so that as he finished his loop, he was on a collision course with the prisoner. At last, he let go of the chain and bucked his hips with all the force of a human-sized insect to unleash a Chaos-fueled Knee of Justice. As his kneepad of solid demon titanite made contact with the crude iron of the mask, the lesser metal crumpled like tissue paper. The Old One hurtled backward, crumpling against the wall, but the Chaos Lord rushed in, kicking through the air and swinging on another chain.
"FALCON KICK!"
He ignited his boot again as he flung himself at the prisoner. Her body snapped rigid, drawing her sword to block. Though the blade's longtime exposure to the power of Chaos had strengthened it, it had never experienced that power, unrestrained. It did manage to fend off Lex's attack, but it was left in a bowed, near-unusable state.
"Let me repeat myself. I will save the Silent Oracle and the Ivory King. You don't have to travel with me, but if you stay here, squandering that power, I will take it from you."
"DEMON! LIAR!" the shrieking, buzzing voice rang out all the clearer for the shattered mask.
The prisoner fell on all fours, shattering its rotten restraints, but she skittered like an insect rather than loping like a beast. She leapt at Lex before he could get the half-melted sword out of his way. Needle-like fangs gnashed at his throat but couldn't penetrate his armored collar. While Lex was no weakling, most of his strength came from his magic. He couldn't shake off the might of madness.
While the monster was distracted, Lucatiel approached, her soft leather boots quiet on the smooth concrete. Despite the flailing, Lex was able to see over the frenzied Old One's head. He caught the swordswoman's eye and nodded subtly. He stopped struggling and instead wrapped his arms around the prisoner's lower back, vines pouring from beneath his bracers to bind her in place.
"Now! Take us both out, Piccolo!"
Lucatiel's eyes narrowed, but she obeyed, running her sword through the Old One's back. It ran through cleanly, though Lex had exaggerated – it clanged to a stop against his armor without harming him. Even this wasn't enough to stop the priestess desperate to restrain the Old Chaos. Magma and steel constantly poured out of her pierced heart as Lucatiel pressed the melting sword deeper and deeper. The prisoner and her withered, suppressed Soul struggled uselessly against Lex's half of Chaos' full power.
He took a deep breath and blew fire across her crumbling mask. The iron burnt away to reveal a face horribly torn by the iron maiden-like spikes of the restraint, but even those eternal wounds began to heal themselves against the priestess's will. The true face of the Old One whose name had been forgotten was an ice-pale woman, a little heavyset, with one cold blue eye. Her bald head was covered in elaborate runes of Chaos sealing Lex recognized from Quelana's defensive magic.
"You don't have to fight the Chaos, you know. Use it as it uses you. I think you realize that's what you've been doing. You have the power to stop the Curse. Use it, or I'll take it from you."
"Liar, liar, soul on fire," the woman quietly screeched, breathing quickly, her eye losing focus.
"My soul is only on fire because this is a terribly awkward position, and my wife wasn't around to help with my morning wood."
Lucatiel coughed.
"Right," Lex sighed.
He closed his eyes and stretched his neck. When his eyes fluttered open again, they were black with glowing rings, a twinned image of the Darksign.
"Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."
The priestess looked ill. Burning spittle dripped from her open mouth, and what little humanity she had left began to ooze out. She shrieked and shuddered, and the insect that had burrowed into her empty eye socket looked out from the darkness.
"This is your last chance. They call you the Sinner, because relighting the First Flame is a Sin against the cycle. I broke that cycle. Chaos has that power. What did you do with it?"
"Chaos destroyed everything!" the woman spat, her voice returned to normal without the influence of the maggot. "I am not a priestess! I began that order to pass on what I knew of stopping what I created! That is my Sin!"
"They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They clearly have no idea what they're talking about because you can't pave over a poison swamp. Well, not without a lot of concrete mix. More to the point, my wife's home was destroyed by Chaos. Her mother died, and the most of her family were turned into demons, herself included."
The Sinner's eye twitched.
"Yes, I married a demon. And then we saved the rightful king of the gods, ended the Curse, and began rebuilding her city with the power that destroyed it. Humans and gods alike swear fealty to Chaos Queen Laag. And here you are, hiding in the dark – what is it, executing prisoners?
This is your chance to make amends. Do something with that power, or I will."
"You cannot fool me, demon! I won't-"
"You feel it, don't you? That we have the same Soul?"
At last, he relaxed the vines and wriggled free. Lucatiel gave him a long, hard look. It had been hard to believe some of the things he had said. Prophets are rarely so… frank. That he was an Old One, she believed immediately.
Rather, she wondered how she hadn't realized it before. It wasn't a lingering suspicion she had so much as her Undead instinct urging her to take his Soul. Still, he was more than a little dangerous. Possibly unhinged.
"Lex, careful!" she said, raising a knife that was her last resort weapon. "She'll knock you out again, and I'm in no shape to fight!"
The Chaos Lord looked at the Sinner with his burning eyes. She glared back with her one good eye and the six eyes of the maggot.
"Have it your way," she said defiantly. "I shall return anon to Eleum Loyce. The voyage will be long-"
"The voyage isn't happening. We can just use some unexplained snake shrine to go directly there. Well, I say 'directly,' but there's actually a bunch of other places we need to go first. I'd like to have my wife's help in confronting Chaos of that magnitude."
The priestess grimaced.
"So be it. It may behoove us to find stalwart companions for such a venture."
Lex nodded.
"I did bring the entire family when confronting the original Bed of Chaos. It was surprisingly easy, but I doubt there's anything that could stand against that sort of ambush."
"Prophet, if you don't mind," Lucatiel said flatly, "would you answer a question?"
"Shoot."
"The Herald said to claim the Great Souls. Why did you invite the Old One to travel with us?"
"I'll claim her as a dependent on my income tax return. And I'm pretty sure all Shanalotte ever says is 'Bearer… Seek… Seek… Lest…'"
"Sure," the knight grumbled.
She looked wistfully at her ruined sword but said nothing further.
"Right, so let's head back to Majula so we can start on the next path."
He headed toward the sealed door but looked back to the Sinner.
"Come to think of it, what's your name? We can't just keep calling you 'the Old One.'"
"'Old One' is suitable. It is fitting that the name of one such as I is forgotten."
"Then I'm calling you Safiya because that's the name of another bald, tattooed witch involved in a convoluted reincarnation plot."
Lex walked off before she could reply, so she simply gritted her teeth, reclaimed her melted sword, and followed after. At the end of the passage, the three of them approached a bonfire whose sword had broken from age. The cleric lit the fire with the shooting motion he'd come accustomed to using, and as he focused on it, the world was overrun with smoke.
"Bearer of the Curse…" the Emerald Herald began as a figure began to rise from the Far Fire.
Abruptly, it was three figures. Then it was…
"By the dragon!"
"Whaaaaat?" Lex said, shrugging. "You thought I wouldn't get along with my mother-in-law?"
Lucatiel decided she wanted no part in the coming discussion and headed straight into the smithy.