UNDEAD PARISH
Lex ran. The Gargoyles were going to be a wash, but he had no idea how long the Capra Demon would slow Oscar down. It had taken him hours upon hours that first time, but now he could usually do it on the first try. Oscar seemed to have a better head on him in general and was an experienced soldier on top of that. Fighting a dangerous opponent in a closed space like that could be nerve-wracking, but he had the feeling that it wouldn't slow the knight down half as much as he needed.
So he ran. He ran down through the church, across the bridge, and down to the bonfire. He ran past Andre, gave the titanite demon in the next room a wide berth, and ran straight into Darkroot.
DARKROOT GARDEN
He killed the first ent or treant or whatever non-copyrighted name was actually correct for the shrubbery monsters that infested the Garden and then the second. He stabbed the top of the third lying in ambush and swung again at the fourth that rushed him in response. He grabbed the soul off the corpse lying behind the rock and continued to the sealed door. He ignored it and instead kicked at the damaged wall beside it. The long-suffering bricks finally gave loose, avalanching through to the other side and revealing a bonfire.
The cleric attuned to this bonfire and continued on his way. He entered a cave and stabbed three more shrubberies lying in wait before grabbing the soul they had been using as bait for unsuspecting Undead. Outside the cave was a fog wall, which he passed through casually.
"You know, that armor over there was supposed to be Oscar's, as part of the cut storyline or something. I wonder if it's still there even though he's alive now."
He reached to his belt and patted empty air.
"That bastard still has my binoculars. Well, I'm sure as hell not backtracking just to see if I can spook him with his own corpse."
Lex followed the glowing flowers around the stone soldiers as he approached the ruined tower. The last one, of course, was completely unavoidable since it was lying right in front of the door. He took a moment to relax and then sprinted past it, ducking under the stairs and digging amongst the tall grass that had grown up through the broken floor. A white summon sign materialized, and he slapped it repeatedly before running up the stairs. The golem was slow, but its thundering footfalls came closer and closer.
The cleric had already backed against the fog wall, but the thing just drew closer and closer. The shrieking sound of a phantom breaking through the fabric of reality echoed out from below. There were only moments left before the stone knight was in melee range. Really, Lex could get away by rolling off the stairs and back to the ground, but that was less dramatic. A witch with a tall popped collar and too many zippers walked up the stairs behind it.
"Are you shitting me? Is this going to be another fight where some lame-ass summoner makes me do everything? You can't even take this loser out on your own? If summons could harm their summoners, you'd be in for a world of hurt, dipshit."
She raised her gnarled, intricately carved staff into the air and fired a massive blast of soul energy, blowing the head clean off the stone knight. Lex applauded sarcastically.
"Let's just get this over with, jackass," she said.
"I'm pretty sure this is why only Dusk is allowed to talk in-game."
"Go now, or I soapstone out, free souls be damned."
"Yeah, yeah."
Lex pushed through the fog. The Moonlight Butterfly was beautiful in game. Less so as graphics improved, but at least it was artful, which is more than he could say about most of the genre. In real life, of course, it was stunning. And it was his solemn duty as an American to murder the ever-loving hell out of it in the name of progress.
As it rose from its perch, he raised his talisman and fired off a massive bolt of lightning. When it struck the Butterfly, it shuddered in midair, and a huge cloud of iridescent dust exploded across the narrow bridge. Beatrice had entered just as it struck.
"Oh, hey, you're not completely useless. Good job on meeting the bare minimums of adequacy."
She raised her staff again, conjuring five orbs of soul energy around her. As they shot after the airborne butterfly, she raised it again and fired off another piercing blast that was allegedly a "Soul Spear" and definitely not a Mega Buster charge shot. The Butterfly had no room to counterattack as Lex hurled another Great Lightning Spear.
"Hey, speaking of Butterflies, do you know what the Butterfly Effect is? You know, where something small happens, and it makes something bigger happen unexpectedly?"
"Yeah. I'm not a dumbass just because I didn't go to Vinheim."
"Right, so, where I come from, there's a story based off the name. This guy goes back in time, accidentally kills a butterfly, and comes back to find that everyone is really aggressive now. Like if the entire world talked like you've been talking, except all the time."
"What's your damned point?" Beatrice said, turning to face him as the Butterfly exploded into soul energy.
"You die fighting the Four Kings. Later!"
"What the f-!"
The phantom faded before she could get any further information out of him.
"Well, I wonder if that helped or if it just made her more likely to rush in unprepared."
He shrugged. Now it was just a matter of crossing the bridge, going up the stairs and retrieving the watchtower basement key and the divine ember. Or so he thought. Blocking his path, quite unexpectedly, was a golden crystal golem.
"What? What! What the-?"
He backed up as it lumbered toward him. Half the floor of the tower's upper level had crumbled, and half of what was left was covered in the petrified blacksmith's belongings.
"Dammit, Seath! I should have known you'd Xanatos something! You lousy, blind, traitorous-!"
The golem lumbered toward him, so he was forced to put an end to his ranting and retreat part of the way down the stairs. The golem raised its arm, and the crystals began to propagate rapidly, forming a human hand. The golem had just flipped him off.
"Wait, hold on a minute. What?"
The golem didn't wait for his confusion to subside. Instead, it swung its arms and jumped off the stairs, falling several storeys and shattering on the tower floor below. Lex shrugged went back to the top to claim his prizes. On the way back down, he was a little more cautious. There was no telling what other surprises might be in store.
"Took you long enough, shit-for-brains."
For example, Beatrice could be waiting for him amidst the ruins of the shattered golem.
"What was that shit about me dying? We're Undead, dipshit. We don't die."
"Look, I don't know how it happens. All I know is that after I fight the Four Kings, I would follow up by looting your corpse in the Valley of Drakes. Don't ask me why it's there, either. I don't know. But if I had to guess, with Kaathe and the Darkwraiths and the Four Kings and Artorias and Manus all gathered in that dank man-cave, the Abyss is a no-girls-allowed club."
Beatrice snickered.
"You're kidding me, right?"
"Well, the real joke is that the Primordial Man is named Man-us, and he has a giant hand, which is what manus means anyway. If you ask me, it's giant because of all that masturbating he does to Princess Dusk, but we all have our vices, so I'll not bash him over it."
"You're messed up, kid."
"Hey. I am the prophet of the goddess of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. This is tame."
"Whatever, kid. Back to work for me, then."
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"I've fought that damned Butterfly at least a hundred times trying to figure out how it casts those fricking laser beams. I almost had it, but then you went and pissed me off! I had to sidetrack and get myself kidnapped by those dumbass Channelers so I could freeze myself and travel to the future! 'course I hijacked its programming to wander over here and let me out however many decades later you got your slow ass over here."
She paused.
"Oh yeah!"
She hit him over the top of the head with her staff.
"Piss off, dipshit! I'm immortal! I'm not going to hollow just because some dusty old Kings slapped me around a little bit! All the rest of you Undead are just losers!"
"You know- ow!"
She hit him again.
"I bet- ow! Will you just listen to me? I was like that too, but then I almost died, and-"
"Wait. You almost died."
She snickered.
"Almost. Allllmost. Most Undead don't start freaking out until they've kicked the bucket at least once! What are you, a baby? Calling you 'kid' was too much – you're even lamer!"
She was nearly cackling now and looked every bit a witch.
"That's the best part. You haven't lived 'til you've died."
She settled down a little.
"Of course, I know the experience can be a little much for most people. It drives them mad. Power is said to do that, after all."
"Well… then…" Lex said, edging away slowly. "That's… interesting… I guess. I'm just going to let you get back to it, then."
Sure, he acted a little crazy sometimes. "Mad with power" was how he'd described his goal in Lordran, after all. Sticking around with a death-obsessed sorcerer wasn't exactly a good idea, though.
"Hey, prophet. Before you go, what kind of sorceries do they use in this time?"
"Uh. Big Hat Logan is about to discover the secret to Seath's crystal sorceries."
"No shit? Man, forget the Butter-lasers! It's not like dweebs are going to stop getting blasted to hell and back if I leave for a while. Lead the way, minion!"
"Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to have minions!"
This time the staff went in his face.
"What the hell?!"
"Relax, scrub. I'll do all the heavy lifting. Don't you worry your pretty little head."
She marched him back across the bridge and down the tower. They followed the glowing flowers back, but at the end of the trail, he stopped.
"There's one more thing I need to get while we're here."
"This shit better be important."
"Uhhhhh… in a historical sense. Also, it might be useful to this guy I know."
She shook her head and sighed but said, "Go on then, kid."
He moved to the cliff face surrounding the basin they were in and approached a large tree. He stabbed it viciously, and it erupted into souls. The death of the tree-creature revealed a previously-hidden path. Halfway along it, another strange creature appeared. It looked like a poisonous frog, but its skin seemed to spread across the forest floor.
"Holy shit! Kill it with fire!" Beatrice shouted, blasting a hole through its head with a Great Soul Arrow.
Lex grumbled something under his breath and continued. He stabbed another fake tree blocking their path and kept moving. They were in a wider basin now, but he kept on target, going into some ruins to the right. There was a long ramp inside, and halfway up, a stone knight began to rise. Before it finished standing, he reached out and crushed its head with a Great Lightning Finger.
At the top of the ramp was a long-dead corpse. Clutched in its death grip was a plain steel ring with the image of a wolf carved into the face.
"The ring of the Abysswalker, though not the one we really want," he said.
"Yeah, I don't give a shit."
They both made a running leap over the chasm directly below and landed where Lex had fought the second group of shrubberies, before the bonfire. Now, Lex led her back toward the Parish. Halfway there, he sidetracked and took a side path, walking down into the vast canyon below.
DARKROOT BASIN
As they descended, they spotted a crystal lizard in the distance.
"Dibs."
Beatrice blasted it, causing it to drop dead on the spot without even having a chance to run.
"I don't think sorcery can normally shoot that far."
"Then the sorcerers of the future suck."
"Did you really have no issues cryogenically freezing yourself like that?"
"Cryo nothing. That's crystal; not ice, dipshit."
Lex sighed.
"Look, kid, sorcery is what I do. It's who I am. It's in my blood. I don't give two shits about anything else. I can learn the Moonlight Butterfly's shit two hundred years ago or next Thursday. Learning Seath's secrets? That's worth actually dying for."
"I guess I see your point. It's not like I really have any reason for risking my life other than Lawful Good tendencies."
"I have no idea what the hell you just said."
"Yeah, it's a prophet thing."
"Whatever, dweeb."
Lex stuffed another whole lizard into his bag, and after insisting that Beatrice could examine its seemingly infinite capacity later, they continued downward. Once they were nearing the end, Lex split off to collect the hunter's set before doubling back with Beatrice and descending the ledge still further instead of continuing into the main body of the Basin.
"Okay, so there's a really tough guy down here. Get ready to blast him after I get him up here."
Lex turned the corner slowly, and the Black Knight came into view. His breath seized up for a moment, and he felt a phantom pain in his gut where the last one had stabbed him. He took an iron grip on his talisman and raised it high. It sparked to life with a vengeance, and he threw with all his might. The bolt struck the Knight before it noticed him, but as before, the damage seemed to have no affect.
Lex sidestepped and started sprinting up the cliff.
"Firefirefirefirefire!"
He ran past her and then stopped suddenly. Something was wrong. Five. Seven. Nine. Beatrice somehow had four more soul masses floating around her than the maximum. The range was something he might have misjudged, but it was hard to miscount glowing energy balls.
As she fired a soul spear, the masses rocketed away as well. The Black Knight was bombarded with a hail of soul power as it rounded the corner and exploded into ash, not even granted the dignified death animation that the last one had.
"That shit wasn't hard, you baby!"