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Consciousness rushed back to Leontius all too quickly. In an instant, he was brought back to reality and his tunnel vision began to clear up. The first thing he saw was his empty right hand held high in the air, the gauntleted fist coated in the Dark Hand power and blocking his view of Ebott's peak, the sun just above it. He then became aware of a tide of pain that washed over him all at once, namely in his chest, abdomen, side, throat, and skin in general. He cringed bodily and doubled over, rasping out a gurgling groan. He fell forward against a body beneath him and he instinctively scrambled off it and tried to sit up, looking about in a panic.

The body was a Silver Knight, unmoving and looking quite dead with a hole blasted in his cuirass. Just as Leontius caught sight of the knight's discarded weapons they disintegrated into ash along with their deceased owner, leaving the confused and injured undead alone.

Leontius brought himself to his feet, the variety of pains beginning to subside as his undead endurance caught up with them. He still felt as though every inch of him had been burned horribly, and he was almost certain that was the exact case. He looked around, finding that he was atop a hill bordering the valley and that his claymore was nearby, just laying on the ground. He hobbled over to the greatsword and picked it up after dispelling the Dark Hand, his battered body protesting with each movement.

After shaking the dirt off the sword and sheathing it, Leontius looked about his person, finding plenty of new dings and gouges in his armor that were inhibiting its movement, as well as a clean cut in its right side, a through-and-through sword thrust in the left pauldron, and a gaping hole in the upper right side of his cuirass that went straight through some of the thickest parts of the armor. The outwardly bent metal from that last bit of damage suggested to him he'd taken some massive weapon or projectile through the back, and considering the gigantic bow he saw not moments ago, he pieced together what had happened.

For some reason, a Silver Knight- hollow or possibly not- came here, engaged him in combat while he was still under the effects of his self-induced berserker episode, lost, and was subjected to the Dark Hand power.

'And shortly after all of my magic just… dispelled? That should not have happened, if I absorbed the knight's soul it should have fueled the magic...' He remembered the last dose of healing Estus he'd saved and he quickly downed it, his wounds sealing up and his skin feeling somewhat relieved of its burns. It wasn't nearly enough to bring him back to full health and he couldn't cast a healing miracle, as he was completely tapped out of focus. Potentially worse yet was the fact that he felt something he could only describe as 'wrong' stirring within him now that the pain wasn't distracting him, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was.

He slowly approached the edge of the hill, dreading what he might see. 'Was I at least able to finish off the...'

Countless hollows unmovingly stared up at Leontius from the valley as he looked down the hill.

'...no, of course I was not. That would have been all too convenient. But why are they just standing-' The ominous feeling inside him spiked in intensity and his hands gripped at his midsection reflexively. He stumbled away from the hill's edge and fell onto his back, silently writhing about in the dirt as his soul felt as though it was being crushed from all sides. His eyes flew open as he recognized a feeling beneath all of it, and he realized what was happening.

Leontius was experiencing a soul reinforcement, but he was not willingly doing so at a bonfire. Rather, it was as if the absorbed soul energy contained within him was collapsing in on his soul of its own volition. The end result was overwhelming pain and a total loss of motor control on his part, reducing him to a convulsing, flailing mess.

The pain and convulsions came to a sudden peak in intensity, and Leontius' sight went totally black as his body violently contorted one last time, his bones straining into positions they weren't meant to be in by muscles pulling and flexing to their extremes. After the final bodily twist, it all came to an abrupt end with Leontius flat on his back, staring up at the sky as his sight returned.

'What in the gods' names was that…?'

He felt strange, but not much worse than before the incident. He slowly got to his feet, abused bones popping and cracking the whole while. The feeling quickly subsided, but his attention was drawn to the ground at his feet, where yet another oddity was taking place. The shadows of the dead blades of grass around him seemed to be warping and pointing towards him, and the effect seemed to be expanding outwards from him.

Leontius' brows knit together in confusion at the anomaly and he walked backwards to get out of it, but that seemed to only make it worse. The shadows began detaching from where they belonged and rushed along the ground towards him, flowing up his legs like liquid and surrounding his body tightly. He attempted to backpedal away from the flowing shadows and swat them off of him, but it was in vain. Soon he was totally encased in shadows, and the world flashed black.

When Leontius could see again he immediately caught sight of a massive black circular 'wave' rapidly flying out from him across the landscape, covering everything in darkness briefly as it went. The wave passed over the horizon and distant mountains in a matter of seconds, and then it was out of sight.

Leontius wheeled about and looked at the world around him, slightly shaking his head in utter confusion as he did so. With the dark wave nowhere to be seen, he looked down at his body and hands, noticing that the shadows were no longer coating them. In their stead, there was what seemed to be a thick black 'outline' surrounding him, with the edges of whatever part he looked at being coated in it, yet not obscuring him.

Something else was wrong. He could hear voices whispering almost inaudibly in a language he couldn't make heads or tails of. He looked around himself and saw no possible source for the whispers, and the mute hollows were still just staring up at him. He came to the unsettling conclusion that the voices were not coming from anywhere around him, rather that they were inside his head.

Leontius began shaking his head more, silently mouthing unanswerable questions and phrases of confusion. A thunderous sound that made his helmet vibrate and his ears ring handily knocked him out of his confused stupor and silenced the voices. He looked about in an attempt to find its source, and it was when he traced the locked gazes of the hollows in the valley to the distant eastern mountain ranges beyond the kingdom that he saw it.

A gargantuan gray arm ending in a bulky fist, thrusting up into the sky through a mountainside. Dust and chunks of the mountain were still settling around the limb as its fingers unfurled, revealing a six-digited right hand. The hand slowly fell forward to the mountain top, soundlessly clapping atop it and sending more debris every which way. The distant sound of the motion hit Leontius a good while after he saw it, right about when the limb began to flex and pull the rest of its body through the mountain. The earth and stone gave way, cracking like an egg as it released the rest of the titanic being's form. Leontius' eyes widened in recognition at what he saw.

Its general form was that of an incredibly muscular humanoid gray dragon. The head that broke through the earth chinspike first was unlike that of other dragons, featuring a large fanlike crest atop it with numerous spikes and horns jutting from it, a short but stout maw, and eight eyes that glowed with an unearthly gray light. Long spikes jutted from its back along its spine and a pair of great draconic wings sprouted from its shoulder blades, the modified fingers spanning the membranous wings flexing as they unfolded to their full breadth once free of the mountain. Its long tail trailed out of the hole in the mountainside behind it as it easily ascended to the peak and stood atop it.

The Dragon God had awakened, and it had broken through to the surface. It swept its gray gaze across the world around it and turned its head to the sky, its mouth opening overly wide to reveal a secondary inner jaw and set of teeth, fists tightly closing and its entire body seeming to flex at once. It stood like that for a bit before Leontius realized what it was doing. He feverishly undid his barbute and dropped it at his feet, then relaxed his jaw and plugged his ears as best as he could. Just as he managed to do so, he caught sight of a rapidly approaching shockwave that passed over the Kingdom, shattering the many stained glass windows of its towering spires and shaking loose eons of settled dust into the air. The shockwave flew across the landscape towards him and the hollows, visible thanks to the force it was imparting upon the dead foliage it raced across.

The moment the shockwave was upon him he couldn't help but screw his eyes shut at the pain, it seemed as though plugging his ears couldn't keep out the skull-rattling roar well enough. He opened his eyes just enough to see that the thing was still roaring, and through his blurred and waving vision he caught sight of a huge gray wave of energy exploding outward from the creature.

The wave raced across the world in a manner similar to the black one that had exploded from Leontius not minutes ago and was upon him in seconds. His vision flashed gray and he was thrown back bodily by the wave and hung in the air for a few moments before being slammed forward into the ground once more, his hands briefly falling away from his ears and exposing him to the full force of the towering dragonoid's roar before he could cover them again.

Leontius' ears rang and his left one began to bleed and lost its hearing, but he wasn't particularly worried about hearing loss at the moment, a more pressing matter had presented itself. When the powerful gray wave passed over him he felt his soul resonate in an eerily familiar manner, like what he felt between himself and Asriel. He felt like he was but a minuscule lost fragment of something far beyond him, a being that easily dwarfed him both in scale and power.

The Dragon God ceased its ear-splitting roar and once the sound died out Leontius slowly released his hands from his ears, left hand sporting some blood from his perforated eardrum. He stared at the distant titan for a few seconds before he grabbed up his helmet and put it back on, casting uncertain glances between it and the hoard of pained looking hollows in the valley below the whole while. They too were casting uneasy glances between him and it, their weapons lowered.

For a few moments, all was quiet again, and Leontius had no clue what to do. He felt overwhelmed, and what's more, the whispering voices had returned, now louder and with tones of what Leontius could only identify as desperation. The brief calm was shattered when the towering dragonoid seemingly turned its gaze in Leontius' direction, looking about as if it were trying to find something.

Panic was beginning to rise in Leontius, he knew full well the grave threat the godlike being presented to him, and more importantly, the Underground. He came to terms with it immediately, and it was when he stared into its empty gray eyes that, for the first time, he truly found himself feeling utter despair at a potential foe. He would have not even the slimmest chance of victory against such a being, and the prospect of fighting it made him think of a single word he'd not used often in his long existence.

'Impossible…'

The god held its gaze in his general direction for a few more moments, then turned it aside in a sudden twitch as something else caught its attention. It looked towards Locille, and in a powerful leap left the mountaintop and glided towards the city, borne aloft by its expansive wings. As it touched down on the outskirts, the voices in Leontius' head began to shift into a cacophony of varying tones and speeds, coming to a maddening crescendo when the god knelt down and cocked its fist back, intending to strike the ground.

The Dragon God sent its fist down but was stopped the instant before it could impact by a bright blue orb of energy manifesting just above the ground. The orb raised up, taking the god's fist with it as it did so. The dragonoid stood to its full height again, agitatedly looking around once the orb vanished from sight. The whispering was still at its peak volume in Leontius' mind, and one of the more distinct voices went quiet for but a moment as another smaller orb appeared briefly, exploding upon the god's right shoulder and vanishing right after. The god reeled away from the hit, swatting an arm in the direction of the explosion. The voice returned right after and another went quiet, followed by yet another explosion, this time upon the creature's stomach.

The explosions then came in rapid succession all across the Dragon God's body, voices silencing and restarting in tune with them. The god was driven away from Locille, taking flight in a desperate attempt to get away from the explosions striking it. It alighted upon a mountain near the city but was still being attacked by whatever invisible foe had set upon it. It was flailing at nothing and being pummeled by the explosive orbs, but ceased its struggle and stood still as a faint gray glow surrounded it.

The next moment a massive gray Force wave exploded out from the Dragon God, instantly erasing the mountain it stood upon and a section of Locille's outer wall. It fell into the crater it made, no longer being assaulted by the blue explosive orbs, the voices correlating to them being completely silent as well.

Leontius looked on in awe at the display of unparalleled power that had just taken place before his eyes, the victorious god standing tall in the aftermath. It slowly made to walk back to its intended target area of Locille's outskirts, but Leontius' attention was drawn away as a singular whispering voice returned.

It was low and droning, speaking incomprehensible words in something akin to a chant. Leontius strained his attention as best he could to figure out what the lone voice was saying, but he eventually gave up and returned to looking at the Dragon God as it knelt down once more. When the god itself halted in its motion to slowly look back in his direction, Leontius froze up again, only to calm as the god's gaze seemed to be directed at something above him.

Leontius turned around and tried to see what had gotten the god's attention, shielding his eyes from the Sun as he looked to Ebott's peak, and it was then that he saw it.

The Moon, quickly eclipsing the Sun.

The world darkened rapidly and was thrust into an unfamiliar dusky half-light once the eclipse came to totality, the lone chanting voice becoming silent as the Moon halted in place. Leontius looked away from the eclipse and back to the Dragon God, seeing that it had straightened up and was staring directly at the blackened Sun.

The chanting started once more. Leontius glanced back at the eclipse, and through his squinting eyes caught sight of the Sun's corona changing color, surrounding the black Moon in an unnatural looking dull-blue light. The lone voice suddenly grew louder and the corona brightened intensely, expanding outward. At first, it appeared like a solid ring, but soon it was apparent that it was instead a huge amount of individual dull-blue beams of light shooting outwards.

The beams encompassed much of the darkened sky, seemingly wrapping the whole world in their light. Leontius was awestruck at the sight, but that awe changed to surprise as a number of the beams changed their courses, headed straight towards him and the hollows, one looking as though it impacted near Ebott's peak. Leontius made to back away as the beams approached, but was struck suddenly by one of them right in the middle of his chest. He staggered backward as the beam flowed into him, and as it vanished he caught sight of the remaining army of hollows experiencing the same thing, beams striking all of them in their chests as well.

Leontius looked down to his chest, patting at his cuirass and trying to figure out what had just happened. 'By Gwyndolin, what madness is this now?!' The pain from his old wounds seemed to increase by a good amount, and his body felt wrong, as though it was not his own. He felt as though he was choking, and an involuntary muscle spasm caused him to intake breath, filling his lungs with air. A singular 'thump' in his chest caught him entirely off guard, and a subsequent 'thump-thump' came after it and continued on. Heat began to rise in him, originating from his core and spreading out to his extremities. Understanding came to him.

'I… I am alive…?' Yes, indeed. He was breathing, his heart was beating, and his whole form was coming alive with body heat. He felt pins and needles as his body briefly went numb and regained feeling, and he looked to the valley in wonder at what he saw. He could just make out that the faces of the hollows were no longer 'hollow', rather they were human. They too were looking about and among themselves in confusion, faces, hair, and eyes all back to normal.

The people below began speaking to each other in voices that were thoroughly hoarse from years of muteness, not too dissimilar to his own. Beyond that, one voice was missing. The whisper had fallen silent for a good while, and just as Leontius took note of its absence it came back with a single unintelligible utterance.

Leontius' wonder was immediately replaced by a feeling of overwhelming vulnerability. The eclipse's dusky darkness surrounding him became oppressive, the empty space around him atop the hill seemingly hiding something horrific. Primal fear began to rise in him, and his heart began to race. He drew his claymore and pointed it all around at nothing, eyes wide in preparation of something about to attack him. There was nothing, but it felt as though whatever had set him on edge in that instant was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. He chanced a glance down at the army of once-hollows and saw that they too were on edge, jostling each other about in their panic. The clerics still at the forest edge seemed the worst off; all but one of them had been reduced to cowering piles of white robes lying in the dirt, with the only one who was not prostrate screaming his head off as he sprinted away into the woods.

A deep growl made Leontius freeze, sweat slowly making its way down his brow. Something was behind him. He spun in place, and as his fear rose even more he swung his blade at thin air, teeth bared and shield raised. Round and round he went, striking at something that seemed to be closing in on him from his back, but wasn't there at the same time. Then, it was not around him, but within him. He was utterly paralyzed by fear, unable to move. His eyes darted around as the lone whispering voice returned, malicious anger clear in its tone.

Then, he saw a massive blue explosion strike the Dragon God square in the chin with such power that it was lifted off its feet and a followup explosion to its chest sent it careening through the air toward the mountain it had emerged from. The god landed on the ruined mountainside back first, displacing a massive cloud of dust and debris as it lay unmoving, the gray light of its eyes dying out quickly. The angered lone voice in Leontius' head petered out and was just barely imperceptible once more, sounding dull and weak.

The blood-freezing fear that had taken hold of Leontius slowly fell away, but he still felt wrong. He was still alive, still had the strange black outline covering him, and still felt like something that did not belong was within him. He looked around, noticing that the world was still bathed in the darkness of the eclipse and that the once-hollows were still lost in the throes of fear.

A sudden bodily pulse radiating out from Leontius' soul made him grip his chest and midsection in a panic. He felt his flesh ripple, his skin crawl, his bones ache… but the strange sensation subsided and the odd feeling of something within him settled and calmed, but did not vanish completely. The sound of the people in the valley beginning to scream caught his attention, and he saw that they'd all taken to tightly holding their own bodies, but whatever was happening to them didn't calm down as it did for him.

Leontius stared in morbid curiosity as their forms shifted and grew, their screams altering in pitch and intonation as they did so. Human skin was replaced with fur, feathers, scales, and chitin. Limbs extended and snapped into new positions, and new ones such as tails, wings, and horns burst into existence through the bodies and clothes of their owners, ruining whatever outfits they may have been wearing. They had become beasts, vaguely humanoid, but still complete corruptions of the human form.

With many of them having completed their sickening transformations, the air was abuzz with the sounds of roaring, chittering, growling, and other various animal cries Leontius couldn't identify. He saw features of animals he could recognize, some he couldn't, and some he was almost certain could not have ever existed in the natural world. The man-beasts began to take notice of those around them and universally began to violently turn on one another, bringing to bear their claws, horns, teeth, and whatever new natural weapons their changes had bestowed upon them.

All the while Leontius stared at the bloody display taking place in the valley below him, just standing silent and agape. 'What is happening? None of this makes sense… this… this should not be happening. I… I need to get out of here. I am weakened, out of Estus, no focus...' He got a hold of himself and backed away from the edge of the hill. He still had some resources to work with. He reached down to the pouches at his belt, pulling a Homeward Bone out and closing his eyes. He crushed the bone…

The sounds of the insanity below were still ringing in his ears. Nothing had happened, and he was still right where he was.

Leontius' eyes flew open and he stared in disbelief at the remains of the crumbled bone as they slipped through his fingers. It had not worked, but for that to be the case, he would have to be disconnected from his last bonfire. Leontius looked to Ebott, a realization coming to him as he did so. It was the Barrier. It nullified magic like it had when he first fell in and his Fall Control spell failed. It was cutting him off from his bonfire.

Leontius was in very real danger, and he had not known it until that very moment. If he died without a connection to a bonfire, there was no telling where he could end up or when he would resurrect, if at all now that he was alive of all things. He would have to escape on foot and hope that he didn't draw the attention of any of the beasts below. He dusted the remains of the bone from his hand and began carefully making his way back to Mount Ebott's base, all the while the sounds of the chaos behind him had him on edge.

Leontius got to the bottom of the hill and turned just in time to see two speeding figures running in his direction in the darkness. He kept backing away as the figures slowed, revealing that they were a pair of beasts that had been in a chase with each other, the two snarling and rearing up at one another in aggressive stances until they noticed Leontius' presence. The moment they saw him, they seemingly forgot their aggression towards each other and shifted it to him. The man-beasts prowled forward with one taking the lead in the advance. It had tan fur, long and straight sword-like claws, and a pair of menacing forward-facing horns sprouting from the top of its vaguely feline head.

The werebeast held its claws out and shot forward at Leontius as fast as an arrow and was only just barely stopped by his already prepared shield. He made to thrust his claymore at it, but it batted the sword away with its claws and followed up with a shockingly quick stabbing counter to his chest, getting around his shield without the sword to cover the gap. The claws passed through his chest piece with almost no resistance at all and went completely through his body, passing through his lowermost ribs and everything they protected.

Leontius threw his head back in an anguished yell. The pain was far worse than he was used to such a wound causing, but he cut off his yell through grit teeth then swept his greatsword in front of him, cleanly removing the beast's arm at the elbow before it could move to eviscerate him with its claws still in him. It roared as it stumbled backward and was silenced by a fatal blow to the head from the greatsword, sending it to the ground. Leontius pulled the severed arm out of him and tossed it aside, both the limb and its deceased owner disintegrating into ash shortly after.

Despite the debilitating pain of his bleeding chest wounds, he got back into his readied stance as the second beast advanced forward. This beast, the one the other had been chasing, had thick bony plating all over its form. It had a bird-like head ending in a wickedly pointed beak, and a long tail ending in a thick club of bone swayed behind it. It ran at Leontius, and again the once-undead readied his shield. The beast slowed as it neared and used the momentum to quickly spin on a foot, bringing its tail around in a lightning-fast attack. Leontius just barely recognized the danger and began to dodge backward, but was not fast enough. The club-like tail slammed into his left arm, and he both heard and felt the crunch of shattering bone as he was thrown off his feet.

Leontius sailed through the air, stunned and unable to right himself as he went. He landed head-first on a patch of exposed stone on the hillside, helmet throwing off sparks from the force of the impact. He rolled onto his back, swimming vision causing him to see a doubled image of the approaching beast, its beak low and pointed at him as it sprinted. He still had his sword in hand and managed to bring it to bear, thrusting it forward as the beast closed in, scoring a hit directly on the unprotected base of its neck. The thing's momentum made it continue forward and it impaled itself upon the greatsword to the hilt. Its body ended up on top of Leontius, its weight both restricting his breathing and stressing his thoroughly damaged armor, agitating the pain from his crushed left ribs as the sharp metal of his ruined armor poked into him.

Leontius made to move the beast off him after pulling his sword from it, but he found that he couldn't move his left arm, the steel protecting it looking mangled and bloodied. The shield-bearing limb hung limply at a wrong-looking angle and rotation as he stood up from the disintegrating beast, and the scent and metallic taste of blood made its way to the forefront of his senses. He spat to clear his mouth of the taste and directed a glance to the main mass of battling beasts, noticing something startling as he did so.

Some of them were headed straight for him. He was uncertain how many thanks to his still somewhat blurry and doubled vision, but he knew for certain he needed to move, and quickly. He ran for Ebott's base, hearing the distant roars of the approaching beasts as he went. He kept going without looking back at first, but an all-too-familiarly haunting sound made him stop and turn.

An invader had manifested just behind him, their back facing him. Judging from their vaguely spiky red form, Leontius figured that it was Kirk. Leontius held his sword at the ready, uncertain what to do with Kirk added into the mix.

Kirk's phantom turned its head to Leontius briefly and waved a hand at him in a manner that he understood as "Get away!" The invader then turned back around and drew his barbed sword and shield then ran at the approaching beasts.

Leontius was confused at the whole ordeal for but a moment, but would not question the blessing. He turned away from the inevitable melee between Kirk and the beasts and continued running, heading for the footpath up to the Barrier's cave.

The path's incline was a bit extreme and its length up the mountain made it seem much worse for Leontius, the injured warrior finding that wounds both new and old were beginning to constantly protest at his continued strenuous movement. Despite his best efforts, his pace was beginning to slow, his legs seeming to feel more and more weighed down with each step. His abused body and ruined armor didn't make his efforts any easier, and the claw wounds in his chest were still profusely bleeding.

Eventually he made it to the path's end, but by then he was using his claymore as a support as he struggled to move. His breathing was becoming more and more labored, and his heart was racing in his chest. A distant ear-piercing animal scream coming from the valley made him take one last look behind himself and he entered the cave and hobbled forth. After dispelling the illusory wall by weakly poking it with his sword twice, Leontius passed through the Barrier as quick as he could, the chilling screams echoing into the cave cutting off once he was through.

Leontius was unsure if being in the Barrier corridor would disallow teleportation to his bonfire, and he didn't want to stop to find out. His thoughts were becoming increasingly muddled and his vision was going blurry. His body felt weak beyond measure, and he was eventually walking with both the support of his claymore and his right shoulder pressed up against the wall of the corridor.

It was when his claymore slipped out of his failing grip that his body finally gave up on standing anymore. The blade clattered forward and away from him as he slid against the wall and fell to the pulsing floor of the corridor, limbs becoming unresponsive as he stared up into the slowly shifting ceiling of the Barrier.

His heart was pounding in his ears, and his breathing was shallow. He sucked in as much air as his lungs would hold and called out as best he could with his still damaged throat, only managing to let out an inarticulate and odd-sounding wail for help. He called and called, all the while his heartbeat continued to slow and become increasingly faint. He was unsure how long this went on for, but he just kept calling out.

Eventually someone came. He couldn't tell who, he wasn't able to make out much more than vague shapes and colors. One was small and yellow, another was taller and blue, two were big and white, and one was vaguely gray, or black-and-white. The shapes hovered over him and he caught voices, but he was unable to make out what they were saying, the sounds as distant and unintelligible as that strange lone whispering voice that was oddly absent. One of the white shapes closed in and touched him.

Warmth.

He hadn't realized he'd been going cold, but that familiar warmth made it all too clear. The white shape brought him in close and held what he recognized as a hand up, the white fur covering it becoming stained red. The hand glowed and made to touch his chest, but his heart finally went still before it could and the hand suddenly halted, hovering above him.

He was pulled in closer to the shape, and his head was moved for him by the red-stained hand. The last thing he saw was her face, and then the cold darkness took him.

Death.

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