-The Catacombs-

Seiko and Jinta started down the stairs leading into the side of the cliff. They'd only walked a short distance from Firelink Shrine, through a graveyard. Jinta cleared his throat, the third time since they started walking. Seiko looked over at him. Her armor was fixed thanks to his repair box, and her hood was up. In the dim light, her eyes glowed far more obviously than in the sunlight.

"You're making me nervous with the silence. Do you not find extended silence to be troublesome?"

"No. I don't know you. What am I supposed to say?"

"A fair point… Well, how about you tell me your story?"

"There's not much to say. I started losing memories in the Asylum until you and Tetsuro started your break out. On the way here, the crow was attacked by something and I fell into Blighttown. Because of that, though I was trained by Quelaana, and given my name. Then I climbed up to Firelink, met with Tetsuro, and followed him to Anor Londo. We were separated after our fight with Quelaag, but I had help through the Fortress from a Knight of Catarina named Siegmeyer. While we were there, in your world, you beat Ornstein and Smough, and we were separated again until Siegmeyer and I could beat them too. We did, I spoke to the Princess, and she sent me to the Four Kings. You know the rest."

They reached the bottom of a staircase that hugged the inside of the cave they found themselves in. The next step was a ladder down into deeper darkness. Jinta looked down, but couldn't see a thing besides some small sparks of white light.

"You make it sound easy, but I'm sure there's more detail to it than that."

He looked back at her and put on his helmet, which muffled his voice slightly.

"I'm willing to bet our fight starts here. You wouldn't happen to be able to light that room for a moment, would you?"

Seiko nodded, but paused to consider her options. She could just throw a fireball and light the room briefly for a flash. She could use Fire Surge, but that wouldn't light the whole chamber completely. She decided to try something new, less as an attack and more for practicality. She raised both hands, palms straight out, fingers open. The air out in front of her sparked a bit before four fireballs appeared at regular intervals across the ledge, then began to extend out over the chamber. Seiko had to close her eyes and concentrate to keep all four lit, and it took more energy than she thought it would.

"I was right," said Jinta. Breaking the silence broke Seiko's concentration, and the bars of flame went out. She lowered her arms and heaved a breath, noticeably drained, but just in need of a brief rest. Jinta noticed.

"Would it be possible to just light the area around yourself? Like a torch? I can defend you if you provide light."

"I can do both…" said Seiko, sounding a bit offended that he thought she wouldn't be able to.

"I can do neither without some sort of light source. If I were alone I'd have to backtrack outside and find something I could turn into a torch."

Seiko raised her right hand over her head, balled her fist, and lit it aflame. The flickering blue light lit the area around them, far enough to see the ground of the chamber a few meters down, but didn't nearly light the entire room. Jinta started down the ladder, to draw attention to the skeletons he'd seen. As he neared the bottom, Seiko jumped down and landed right next to him, surprising him. He started to question, but clattering bones on brick signaled the first attacker. Jinta drew his Estoc and parried the skeleton's wild strike with its curved sword. With another swift motion, he cut the skeleton down, his weapon leaving a faint white trail in the air.

"Magic?" asked Seiko.

"My weapons are blessed. It's a major reason why I suggested coming here first. Another, of course, being how close we were to it. There are a few more skeletons. I'll advance, so stick close behind me."

Jinta drew his other sword, a falchion, in his right hand. He walked forward and Seiko followed just behind, right hand held high as their torch, left hand holding a swirling Fireball at the ready. Two skeletons rushed from the darkness, flailing their weapons. Jinta dodged one and slashed upward, from hip to shoulder, and downed one. He then ducked an overhead slash, one that then nearly missed Seiko's face, and slashed through the skeleton's spine. His blade passed through tough bone as if it were clay, which Seiko took note of. She noticed, looking down at the second enemy to fall, that another pile of bones was rising from the dirty brick floor. She tossed a Fireball at it, the flames consuming it, killing the skeleton before it became an issue.

"There must be a mage nearby raising these things… Unless we set off some sort of alarm by entering," said Jinta. "I much prefer the former, because the latter implies we'll be fighting every single person ever buried down here."

The two turned to walk through the only way forward, a thin hallway, when two footsteps sounded behind them. Before either could act, a curved sword slashed through Seiko's gold-hemmed robes that hung down her back, and scraped a scar across the back of her armor. Seiko whirled about, snapping out a Black Flame, a Pyromancy new to her that was a darker version of Great Combustion. The skeleton that had attacked her was the same one from before, risen again, charred bones and all. It was blown to pieces by Seiko's burst of black and blue fire, but the bones remained intact thanks to the magic acting on it.

Jinta had flinched away from the heat, but spoke up as soon as it died away.

"That leads me to believe it's a mage raising them. They'll keep getting up until we either stop the mage, or if I put them down with my weapons."

"I guess the blessing is useful for more than killing them in one hit, huh?"

"Like I said, it's a major reason why I decided to come here first. It should be the easiest path of the remaining three, and with you here it will only be easier. Otherwise I'd have to light my own way and fight at the same time."

"Still, it would be easier for you to do it alone than me. Having to kill the same enemy over and over just to move forward would exhaust me. Not to mention be dangerous."

The two waited for the skeleton to get up again, Jinta cut it down quickly, and they moved into the next room. It was a dead end, with a massive sealed door blocking the way. Two more skeletons rose from the floor to attack Seiko and Jinta. Seiko threw a punch at one as Jinta turned to deal with the other. The skeleton dodged aside, much swifter than it appeared, and Seiko only ended up punching a half-crumbled pillar. She moved away from the skeleton without looking over at it to avoid any attack it would make after dodging, then turned to face it. What she saw instead was the skeleton running for a hole in the wall near a corner in the room.

"One's running!" she called out as she chased it.

Jinta had already killed the other, so he turned to follow her. Seiko threw a Fireball, but the skeleton dodged it again, this time off the incline the hole had led to and into a small room. A Fireball from an enemy shot out of the dark, forcing Seiko to lower her right arm and counter with one of her own. The two magics collided, spraying orange and blue flames through the air. Seiko swept the room with a Fire Whip, downing the skeleton but unable to reach the figure at the other end of the room. She raised her arm again to light the area and moved in, her left hand at the ready to intercept anything that the remaining enemy would try.

When she and Jinta drew closer, they could see that the figure was a man who appeared so old it was as if he'd been mummified. He held a lantern made of a charred human skull, churning his flame within it before launching another Fireball out of it. Seiko snapped out Black Flame, creating a brief wall of fire to negate the incoming attack. She stepped forward, unaffected by her own flames, and punched the old man in the chest with her left arm. Bones shattered under the force, the man flew back into the wall, and his lantern went out.

"That was… Excessive… But I didn't know fire could snuff out fire," said Jinta.

"Ordinarily it can't. That wouldn't make any sense. Pyromancy isn't normal fire… Or, I guess, it doesn't have to be. Physical fire, hotter and cooler flames, using the flame for something other than offense… Pyromancy has many faces. I've constantly been learning more about it, and I still feel like I'm missing some important techniques or concepts…"

"So, then, you used physical fire and flames of a higher heat and stopped his attack? That must take a lot of control."

Seiko lowered her right arm, which was lit as a torch with blue flames lightly flickering over her armor.

"Control is actually what I lack the most. I can't seem to bring my heat down below blue, or even up to white. When you see red or orange flames, those are the easiest to produce and control, but they're also the coolest. And the physical aspect just takes… A twist? It's hard to describe. It's more of a feeling than a thought."

"It sounds like Quelaana taught you a lot. Unless those are all your findings beyond her teachings? It also makes Pyromancy sound like the exact opposite of Sorcery, which takes incredible concentration and knowledge of the workings of magic."

"That was all stuff Quelaana taught me. I've never learned anything about sorcery, so I wouldn't know. But you're a paladin, right? How is that different?"

"You must have seen Solaire use lightning, right? That's about as close as a miracle can get to Pyromancy. The lines we must know to draw on lightning are so short and simple that even a thought can be enough to use it. More complicated miracles, however, like healing or shielding oneself from harm, require a verbal recital of the correct passages or tales. Further, one must have the faith to have it answer one's call."

"So, memorization and faith?"

"Essentially, yes."


The two walked back into the previous chamber, the dead end.

"Now the question," said Jinta, "Is how to proceed."

"There was a bonfire in the other room. Maybe we should light it and look around in there?"

Seiko walked back in, lighting the bonfire as Jinta entered the room.

"Maybe moving that?" said Jinta, pointing to something behind Seiko.

She turned to see a wide, thin slab jutting from the wall. It was attached to some mechanism. Seiko stepped up to it and pushed the slab toward the wall. The mechanism moved long enough to release something inside the wall, causing something large to shift and shake the ground for a second. Seiko and Jinta went back to the other room to see the way clear. The slab that had been in their way had slid into the ground. Faint light lit the way ahead, and the path was lined with odd statues.

"Onward we go, then…" said Jinta.

The light turned out to be sunlight from an opening high above. They found themselves a third of the way down into a massive ravine, slashed into the ground deeper than the sunlight allowed them to see. Another necromancer walked on the other side of the ravine, where the catacombs continued across a bridge. In fact, there were many bridges crossing the gap, each lower than the last. The catacombs were carved into both sides, with no telling how far into each side they continued. A skeleton on their side, the left, spotted them and started moving in to defend the catacombs. When it spotted them, others in the area started to follow, and the necromancer was aware of their position as well.

Jinta took the fore, cutting down the skeletons in exchange for some scars in his armor and some bruises. The chainmail under the white cloth of his armor prevented the rusted blades the skeletons carried from slicing into his flesh, but didn't stop the force of their blows. With no muscle to drive them, their strength was more than human, gifted from unearthly force.

Seiko took to bombarding the necromancer. Her straight-flying Pyromancy was blocked by a skeleton with a shield. She didn't want to use Chaos Pyromancy so soon, so she took a different approach.

Jinta felled the last skeleton on their side and started toward the bridge that would lead him to the necromancer and the skeletons that guarded him. He glanced back to make sure Seiko was ok, but instead caught sight of her leaping clear over the gap. She hit the ground, rolled to the side to keep her orientation and change direction, slid over some gravel, then charged forward. A skeleton slashed at her, but too wide and too slow. Seiko threw up an arm, ulna bone met silver gauntlet, and her other arm knocked the skeleton to pieces. The necromancer shot a Fireball with his lantern the second the skeleton was out of the way. As Jinta rushed for the bridge, he watched Seiko throw the ragged black robe she wore like a mantle in the way of the Fireball. She charged right through the attack, threw back the robes to see, stepped in, and landed a punch right in the necromancer's chest.


Jinta arrived in time to cut down the skeleton Seiko had knocked aside, and another just behind her, but then the din of combat fell away to silence once more.

"Your hood," said Jinta, "Is all that a cape, or rags, or… You blocked Pyromancy with it."

Seiko pulled the gold-hemmed robe from around her shoulders, held it by the shoulders, shook it once to snap it out, and held it up.

"They were a gift from Quelaana - robes just like hers. No matter how hot, no flame can harm them. Not even Chaos or melted stones. That's not to say if I wore them and dove in magma that I'd be ok, but they're still useful."

"I suppose that explains why it looked so wrinkled around your shoulders, instead of flowing like a usual cape or mantle. It also explains why you haven't cut it to behave as such. Aren't they hot to the touch after using them like that?"

Seiko ran her hands over the robes. If it was hot, she couldn't feel it through her gauntlets. She took one off, set it down, and tried again.

"No? Why?"

"It makes me wonder if the robes absorb heat somehow. Normally, wearing cloth like that bunched around your neck would make you hot, wouldn't it? Or are you just that tolerant of high heat?"

Seiko shrugged and started putting the robe back where it belonged. She was adjusting the robe around her shoulders, done making sure her hair was out of the way, when an arrow pierced the back of her hand and pinned it to her collarbone. Seiko flinched away and cried out in pain, looking for where the arrow had come from. Before Jinta could stop her, she jumped up into a break in the wall, toward the glowing white sockets of a skeleton archer.

Jinta immediately ran ahead on the only path he had, cutting down one or two skeletons and trying to figure out which way would lead him to Seiko. The sound of smashing pottery, clattering bones, and weapons hitting the ground led him right to her. The three skeletons that had been in the room were knocked over for the moment and Seiko was busy smashing one of their skulls into a sharp corner over and over.

"Will you stop a moment and at least heal yourself?!" said Jinta, trying to find the bones he needed to cut into to keep the skeletons down.

Seiko, her left hand still pinned to her right shoulder, ignored him. The skull she was trying to shatter was protected by the necromancer's magic, and was actually chipping away at the sharp corner with every blow instead of doing a thing to the skull. The bodies of her enemies started to reform, but Jinta cut them out of the air. The second one of his swords passed through the bones of the skeleton whose skull she had in had, Seiko's next blow shattered the skull to dust and fragments.

Seiko huffed, some sparks flying from her teeth, and ripped her left hand away from her shoulder. She yanked the arrowhead out, gritting her teeth, and threw it away. Once the shaft of the arrow was out of her hand and her body was free from foreign objects, Seiko drank some Estus to heal the wounds and kicked another nearby skull. It shattered against the wall across the room.

Jinta watched the whole thing in silence. It was obvious Seiko had an irrationally wrathful streak, and he wasn't too sure what it was that had set her off. Was it the surprise? Was she jealous of her hands? Her hair? Perhaps the robe? While he was busy wondering, Seiko approached him.

"Let's go, already."

"Right…"

The two pressed on, further into the Catacombs...


A/N: I find it strange that I'm struck by thoughts like "I'm behind schedule," and "I should apologize for being late," when it comes to my writing. If my motivation could stay consistent, I'd post a new chapter every week, like I want. I want to finish my practice by the end of the year, and finally move on… And yet I find myself wanting to apologize to you all. I know there's less of an audience now than there was originally, but still, I won't forget my years on dA with NO audience. To those of you still sticking with me, I wish I could live up to my own expectations, at least, if not yours as well. Work's picking up, school will start next week (my last semester in college if I don't fuck it up), and my only goals are this series, passing grades, and somehow buying a ticket to Canada before the end of the year… Working at a minimum wage bookstore job… Wish me luck!