Melancholy is a plague amidst humanity, spreading from mind to body to soul.

But sometimes the escape from such despair, we find in each other.

Amidst the dark, drab air of the Asylum it was all Quar'en could do to not think of home. She tugged her knees tighter to her chest and rested her chin atop them. They had left her armor on, at least, but the cold still struck deep. She could hear herself shiver, the metal plates clanking against the damp brick behind her.

Her father had made her this armor, gathered the material and forged it himself. It'd taken nearly four months to complete, what with the influx of visitors to Lournstigg that summer and their need for sharp swords and sound armor. Still, her father insisted that he wouldn't trust his daughter in anything that hadn't come from his hand. He had dreams of her becoming a knight just as he had, a dream that had come so close to coming true.

Yet now his heroic daughter sat in the lightless maze of cages nestled beneath the grand city of Hosse. What would he say to her, having already lost so many children? Would he mourn her? Or wish that he'd never had a daughter, to distance himself from the Darksign she now carried. Small towns were suspicious and he would no doubt face the wrath of untempered ignorance should the news of her affliction ever reach them.

And it would. Even if she returned before word spread, the Darksign that burned just above her heart would be more than enough proof for anyone. She could try and hide it, but when she was found out it would only create more problems. And that was assuming her own family didn't shun her.

Quar'en hugged her knees tighter.

And then, like a stone thrown into a pond, a sound broke through the monotonous silence. A clattering of metal.

Quar'en leaned forwards, seeing the glint of metal shimmer in the single stream of sunlight coming in from above. She turned her head up and saw the shadow of a figure only for a fleeting moment. She waited a minute, then pushed forward onto her hands and knees and grabbed the small key that lay nestled in the grime of the cell floor. She turned it over in her hands before leaping to her feet and maneuvering it into the lock on the cell's door.

The click of the lock gave Quar'en such a sense of relief she nearly fell back down to the floor. Even if she wasn't back outside, she was free to move, to wander. So much better than wallowing in a tiny cell.

Her elation was short lived when she saw that others, too, had been freed from their cells, but simply sat slumped against the wall. Their eyes were sunken and dark and it was a minute before Quar'en realized it was likely that she, too, looked like them. A dried husk.

She tried not to make any eye contact with them as she passed, weaving between their bodies in the narrow hallway. Her armor felt heavier here for some reason as she clunked and scraped against the brick. The torches were barely enough to see where her next footfall would land, let alone be able to know where the bricks were slightly too narrow for her shoulders.

The bricks eventually gave way to barred gaps through which a thunderous beast kept pace.

Quar'en kept her eyes facing forwards lest her shaking knees send her to the floor again.

When she had first been dragged into the Asylum, she hadn't had the chance to see much of it. They had covered her head with burlap and hoisted her by her elbows down into the depths. She had smelled the mold and wet metal, felt her feet drag down the millions of stairs, heard the snap of the ancient torches... but more than that she was, for all intent and purposes, in an entirely foreign world.

As she dropped down into a flooded room and saw one of the husks sitting in the corner, she was tempted to remove her gloves and take a look at her own hands. She knew what they would look like - she had seen enough of the Undead in her travels - but to connect their hideous appearance to herself would be... troubling.

Instead, Quar'en tugged at her sleeves and continued on.

The Asylum felt as if it went on forever. At every corner another husk was curled into a corner, swallowed whole in their despair. It took all of Quaren's might not to curl up beside them. Though her desire to escape was strong, the weight of the unending maze of corridors made the journey exhausting.

When Quar'en finally stumbled upon the courtyard and felt true, genuine sunlight on her skin, she breathed a long sigh out into the air. She knew she wasn't free, not yet, but just being out of those confines of despair renewed that small glimmer of joy deep in her skin. She stood there, arms outstretched, taking in all the sunlight she could, when she heard a voice.

"Hello?"

Quar'en startled. She hadn't heard more than the moans of Hollows and the crackles of torches since she'd been put here. Hearing another voice - a human voice - was so foreign to her now it took a moment for her to respond. She took a step towards the source. "Yes?"

"Oh! You can speak!" The voice paused. "A good sign."

"Who-" Quar'en's mouth was dry and she found her voice raspy from such a long state of disuse. "Who are you?"

"Come closer. The gate beside the door."

Quar'en quickly found what the voice was speaking about and tried the handle. It was locked tight.

"Shove on it a few times," the voice said. "It's barely holding together as it is."

Quar'en took a few steps back and then rammed the door with her shoulder. It gave a satisfying grunt and she tried again. On her third try, the latch broke and she stumbled through the threshold. She turned back to look at the lousy excuse for a door and wondered if she might have been able to open her cell that way, if she had only tried. The thought, the longer she pondered it, made her feel miserable. If I hadn't been so resigned to my own pity I-

"Ah!" The voice broke Quar'en from her thoughts.

She turned back to face the room she'd entered and her joy at hearing another person was quickly diminished when she saw the state of the man who spoke.

Wearing dented and bloodstained armor and barely sitting up atop broken stone and brick, this man had certainly been through a lot. He lifted his hand to beckon to her and she imagined that, if she could see his face, he would be smiling. A single cone of sunlight streamed down from the ceiling, surrounding the soldier with an almost divine light.

"You're no Hollow. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to see a person with their wits still about them."

Quar'en agreed, but her tongue felt sluggish. She just nodded.

The soldier looked her up and down. "You are in a far better state than I, so I can only hope you can carry the torch where I have failed. You can see I am..." he paused, "hardly more than a breath's width from death. My only fate now is to die and lose all that I am to insanity."

Quar'en blinked. She did not wish to interrupt, but she was unsure as to what exactly this man was getting at.

He chuckled. "But where are my manners, laying all of this on you without hardly introducing myself." The soldier weakly extended a hand. "Oscar, of Astora."

"Quar'en," she took his hand, "of Lournstigg."

"Lournstigg, I can't say I've heard of it."

"It is... small." Quar'en mentally cringed. She was still so out of it she could barely speak more than a few words. She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to focus her mind. "It is... far east of here."

Oscar tilted his head in interest. "I haven't been out that way. What is it like?"

"Colorful," she replied. "The trees... are like sunsets. It smelled forever like dour berries and smoked fish."

"I regret that I can never experience it. And I am sorry you are trapped here, so far from home."

Quar'en shook her head. The memories of her home tugged at her heart. Though it felt like she had spent years in this hell, the pictures of the town and her family felt as though they had happened yesterday. "What happened to you?"

There was a long pause before Oscar replied. His head hung down, his chin resting on his chest. "There is a saying amidst my family of the ringing of the Bells of Awakening to set free the knowledge of the fate of the Undead." Another pause. "What a fool am I to think I could ever have gotten farther than I did."

Quar'en drew closer and she kneeled beside him. She could see his wounds, extensive and fatal, and resisted the urge to touch him. "There isn't... anything you can do?"

"No, not now. My fate is set. But you," Oscar turned his head up to face her again, "you are different." He winced as he reached down to his belt and unhooked a small flask. "Here, take this."

Quar'en obliged, tipping the glass flask and watching the golden amber liquid inside slosh about. "What is it?"

"Estus. A cure-all, for lack of better terms."

Quar'en shook her head and started to hand it back. "Then why don't you-"

"I told you. My path has drawn to a close. Take it, and carry it on with you." Oscar was quiet again. "I shouldn't keep you much longer. I would hate to turn on you and cause you harm."

"I don't understand."

"You won't, not for a while. But trust that everything will become clearer."

Quar'en didn't. She held the flask in her hands, wanting nothing more than to hand it back. Oscar was in far more need than she was.

"Thank you," Oscar said suddenly. "Thank you for making this last conversation a worthwhile one."

"Worthwhile?" Quar'en asked.

Oscar nodded. "I shall think of trees like sunsets and of smoked fish. And of hope."

Hope? The longer Quar'en spoke to this man, the more lost she was becoming. Perhaps he was simply a figment of her mind as it slowly rotted back in her cell. "I'll... do what I can."

"And that's all one can do." Oscar settled back into his spot on the rocks and leaned his head back. "Good luck to you, Quar'en of Lournstigg."

Quar'en stood, tucking the flask into her pocket. She took a few steps back, still staring. She wondered if Oscar was still watching her beneath his helmet, but she didn't want to ask. She turned back towards the door and slipped into the courtyard once again.

Her mind wandered back to her memories of Lournstigg and she smiled despite herself. She turned back to the gate and wished she could simply take herself and Oscar out of this place and back to her home. Her father would likely goad him into telling stories of being a knight, ask who had made his armor, or how many beasts he'd felled at once. They would roar with laughter over a hearty dinner and speak long into the night. When the hearth had finally burned itself to coals, everyone would tuck into bed until morning chores beckoned.

Quar'en touched her face and could feel the ridges in her skin even through her gloves.

She would find a way out of this. Oscar believed there existed an escape, and that was one more than there had been when she had started.

She would find her way out, and find her way back home. Darksign be damned.