Chapter Nine: The Sins of Our Fathers.

Gywndolin held the phantoms under his thraldom; his commands the only voice in their scrambled craniums.

Giant hands swiped from every angle. Oscar span and dove, twisted and strafed as spears were thrown. Through the blurred adrenaline rush he suddenly stood on the precipice; twenty feet above the Cathedrals passage. One foot abruptly halted, hanging in mid-air. Oscar turned around and bounced off the shin of a giant; even he was scrawny beneath their crouched stance. The giant rose a balled fist ever so slowly. A pulsating white light shuddered from within the towering colossus, its golden attire flittered as a spherical ball of translucent light blasted outwards. It knocked the blue knight off the elevator. Oscar's armoured body caromed off the wall and boomed with a vociferous leaden sound as he slammed onto the ground below.

Gwyndolin tip toed forwards. With a tremulous hand he pinched at the loose folds of his garment and hung them above his bony, extruding knee. He carefully leant forwards and gripped tightly on to the safety of a giant. A slight gust could easily knock his abnormally thin body from the elevated platform. The crying crash of armour was not enough to satisfy him. Gwyndolin peered down at the sprawled mass of metal which lay in waste below the sheer drop.

Gwyndolins wanton attempt to stultify the Knight had finally been achieved.

"His superfluous nature to the task at hand over-exerted his frail, hollowing body." Gwyndolin trembled as he attempted to tackle a stray greying hair from his pallid face.

He shielded his sensitive eyes from the sun as he focused on the mess below.

"The cause of his inevitable demise."

"His quixotic approach to scour clean the cursed world was impressive, though infeasible."

"What a shame!" He sniggered.


"What are you waiting for?"

"Bodies… souls… hollows. They are my prisoners." The yellow man looked off into the emptiness, only a bellowing wind replied and a rapturous chill that warmed him, sending goose pimples up arms sleeves.

He turned and looked at Tarkus.

"Why did you come back, Iron Clad?"

"I'm not Iron Clad. Iron Clad is my father… was my father…" Tarkus' habitual flourishing gestures stopped, and his shoulders slouched, unaware if it was from the torments of sorrow, or the pain from carrying his black iron armour from one world to the next. His head slightly wilted, like the many white, thin tree's that fought to stay rooted from the powerful gusts.

"Hmm…" The yellow man sunk his swaddled chin into his palm. He pointed once again beyond the statue.

"Beyond the door… there's something there, I'm sure. You must seek it, as your father did…" He fought the constraints of the arched bulbous sack upon his head, which ached his back so. The force gradually pushed him down, further and further, until he wobbled uneasily, almost toppling him. He grappled onto the cage and nestled into it. Tarkus remained grief-stricken, unable to truly grasp at the man's words. Only a rhythmic sloshing of bloodied waves crashed against the walls in his skull, dulling the surrounding sound of realism.

"Will I find the truth?" Tarkus asked wearily.

"You will find a truth, but perhaps not the one you are looking for. There will always be someone to hinder and someone to help."

The xanthous man looked down at the ground and mumbled something, yet the words were taken adrift from the easterly wind, and Tarkus could not hear them.

The tower behind the statue was frozen solid. A rigid structure, its walls had collapsed, chunks of heavy debris rest under drifts and mounds of soft snow with an ice underlay. There were noticeable gaps, from what and by whom, who could tell?

As Tarkus walked towards the door he swore he could faintly hear the loose words, floating in the breeze; 'Iron Clad, please, rest in peace amongst the dead.'

Beyond the door the entrance opened into a circular pit, only the whistling wind through the ramshackle walls reminded Tarkus of where he was. Another dimension, a world trapped in a painting… a nightmare. He peered up, craning his neck upwards towards the spiraling, everlasting stair case which wound into the white mist. He stumbled, the spinning, the swirling helix of stone slabs. He buckled and landed on one knee. A familiar warmth filled his waist, a damp red, his wound splitting, an infestation that was creeping, searching for the last embers of life in the dying fire of his heart.

"Get up."

"Huh?"

"Focus Tarkus."

"Alandra?"

"You're so close."

Tarkus struggled to his feet. He opened the opposite door of the tower and exited outside into the harsh sting of pounding hail and blustering cold.

The bridge stretched towards a distant tower. Stone archways placed at intervals gave the weary traveler respite from the cold, but to become too comfortable in these hovels would lead to imminent death.

Tarkus approached the stone outlet. Snug and frozen in the corner was a skeleton, stripped of clothes and flesh. Its skull was rock solid and stuck to the wall.

Tarkus stumbled onwards.

The ground was shaking, falling to pieces.

Tarkus stumbled onwards.

The towers arch came into view.

A Berenike knight, hollow and desolate, wandered aimlessly. The crest on its helmet protruded into the air, glossy and shimmering from the melting snow, under the ever present white glow in the sky. The Berenike charged towards its fellow man. Tarkus stood, legs apart, greatsword thrust outwards. His posture was perfect. With one swift strike Tarkus cut through the thick plates of the knight and pierced through its spine. An inhuman cry wailed and echoed in the expanse. Tarkus pulled his sword from the corpse and rolled it off the broken pathway. The black blur rapidly descended and disappeared into the gloom.

The right side of Tarkus's body slowly slumped, forcing him to drag his greatsword which sparked across the stone. The heavy burden became an insurmountable ache, he fell on one knee and lay the sword on the ground. He carried on and paused for a mere moment to look back at his faithful companion, neglected in the snow as rapid torrents of white globules merged it into the surroundings. His sword had become one of them… the same… forgotten… hollow… How could he leave it behind? Was it but a sword? An inanimate object, with a bond, tied to human nature. That's the difference between Hollows and humanity, we give respect, we have faith, we tie an imaginary life force onto objects of importance; maybe it's ridiculous, but it's better than feeding off peoples souls, Tarkus thought.

We must all leave these things behind… the xanthous man had said.

He fell to the ground. Snow began to build upon his motionless body. That homely stone hovel was but a mere stride away. Tarkus clawed along the floor and took refuge inside its walls.

Time past and Tarkus awoke. His fingers were stuck together, his armoured elbow joints were stiff with layers of ice between them; they creaked. The chin of his helmet had briefly started to stick to his chest plate, but a sharp jerk detached the two. Tarkus slowly, like a possessed man, swayed, attempting to break the frozen encrustation.

He freed himself. The cold was bitingly fierce, spreading under his armoured plates and sinking through cloth. The warmth of life force, and the coldness of nature fought for his soul. He removed his gauntlet and looked at his fingers, naturally they were slightly blue, but they were crumbling away; bones jutting from blackened flesh.

Tarkus entered the tower.

There was snow on the ground, pouring in from above, through a crumbling orifice. It rained down upon a towering white silhouette, dappling across the fluffy strands of its long white dress or natural fur, he could not tell. Two tiny horns protruded from the top of its silvery, flowing hair.

"Who art thou? One of us, thou art not. If thou hast miss-stepped into this world, plunge down from the plank, and hurry home. If thou seekest I, thine desires shall be requited not." Her feminine tones were soft to the ear, but her words were backed with a venomous conviction.

"I… I… seek the truth about the curse of the Undead."

Her furless tail, coated in leathery ashen skin curled around from behind her and vehemently thrashed up and down; spraying a flurry of soft white particles.

"Iron Clad, I touched your hand as you left…" She said perplexed.

"What?"

She paused. Flecks of snow sat upon her brow, tipped the top of her strange diminutive horns and melted.

"He searched for the Occult power to finish the gods. But he did not hath heart."

Tarkus turned back and stared despondently down the pathway. The entirety of the bridge was obfuscated by a continuous barrage of solid ice chunks and battering gusts of freezing white wind.


One sharp pain pierced agonizingly above all the rest. Oscar touched his once blue, dusty surcoat, it was soaked, wet through with a new colour for his coat of arms. A viscid crimson gunk stretched in stringy lines between his fingers. Copious amounts of had blood pooled out around him.

Blue was his colour.

Proud Knight of Astora.

We all wore blue.

The thin sheet of iron that was his thigh guard had bent on impact; a slant that declined and dug into his muscles, so deep he was unable to retrieve it. With both arms he slowly crawled into the Cathedral. An adequate place to die, with the gods looking down upon their grand building, peering through the windows at the fallen Knight; revered in the white light that rained down from the clear glass. A giant statue of Gwynevere stared down at him, with a mournful downwards curvature across her lips. Yet even when crafted out of rock she was still a wondrous sight to behold, such smooth curves and her eyes resembled realism, a harrowing glint behind their shadows.

But he knew delusions, as Gwyndolin had portrayed himself as his own sister, Gwynevere.

Oscar lay there, crippled and distraught, but a glimmer of hope resided in his fearless mind. They shared the same nature: he and Tarkus. And as long as Oscar lived, he knew he could not die. Not now that he had a message for Tarkus, a message of his past, of truth.