Isekai'd, My Posterior!
"I still don't think we should do this." Quelana said, jittery, as William and Oscar walked in front of her at a steady but comfortable pace.
"And I still don't think that they should have stopped making roller shoes when skateboards became popular, but we don't always get what we want." Bit back the undead Thief with a flick of his lightly singed hair.
"I'm sorry, 'roller-shoes'?" Oscar pipped in out of curiosity.
"Footwear with miniature wheels inserted into the heels for quicker movement on smooth surfaces." William blurted out absently and the Astorian seemed to glow with excitement.
"Why, how marvelous! I've never heard of anything like it."
"Yes, well, that aside, is there really a need for me to be present in your grand adventure?" the Pyromancer said, getting back on topic only for the undead she hated to glance back with a mirth-filled smirk.
"What's the matter? The impending meeting with your younger sister making you lose your fire? Oh, poor widdle Quelie's a scaredy-cat, yes she is!" he teased and the Milf of Pyromancy ground her teeth together so hard they could hear it echoing throughout the tunnel's passage.
" Don't you mock me by assaulting my apprehension. It's only natural that I fear the first meeting in centuries with my mutated sibling. And for the love of the sun, stop calling me Quelie."
"Why? Don't you like my cute nickname?"
"I'd like to sheathe that sword of yours where Gwyn's light will never shine."
"So you admit that you want to have my ass? If you have just said so sooner, we would both be back in Blighttown realizing all of your kinky Milf fetishes."
"How about we stop arguing for at least five seconds," Oscar suddenly cut in when he noticed the Mother of Pyromancy begin to funnel her magic into that glowing right hand of hers. "Please?"
Quelana huffed and crossed her arms under her chest as William turned his head back onto the pathway silently. The knight let out a grateful sigh of relief that his plea had paid off.
"Still though, must be embarrassing to be the oldest virgin in the world."
"Okay, that's it!" Quelana screamed and charged a fist full of fire as her face flushed an intense shade of red.
"William!" Oscar shouted, turning to his companion he had had the decency to shield behind his larger form before the undead was incinerated by the wrath of a woman scorned.
"You said stop arguing for five seconds, and I did. If you want to blame somebody, blame your terrible attention to detail." The Thief replied casually before pulling his tongue at a furious Quelana.
Oscar merely sighed out in irritation. Out of all the people they had met on their travels so far – and there hadn't been that many – William was awfully eager to pump his mouth to the extreme so long as it would get a rise out of the Daughter of Chaos behind them. He wondered just what had happened with the two of them after escaping those enraged Lizardmen?
"Just why is it so important that I talk to my sister anyway? She must have gone insane from the corruption of my mother's failed replication of the Flame anyways!" the woman in black with gold trimming argued, doing her utmost to shove the Astorian out of the way so that she could fry herself an asshole in human clothing. Wait, why was she still thinking about backsides? Was he possibly correct in assuming that she had a thing for men's derriere? She recalled staring at Salaman's a lot whenever he wasn't looking or in that skimpy loincloth he wore when training his magic but…
Another blush lit her face at the thought before she quashed it down in anger. No! She did not have a thing for rear-ends! She did not have a thing for rear-ends! She did not have a… wait, why the Izalith was she trying to get a peek at that idiot's rump encased in tight leather fabric that was colored just the right shade of bla- Damn it! He was right after all.
"Well, if your highness must know before procrastinating for another millennium, we don't exactly want to kill the guardian of the Second Bell." William replied in an exasperated tone.
"Wait, we don't?" Oscar asked only to receive a swift kick to the calf. "Right, of course we don't!"
"And why not?!" Quelana fumed. "Why go through all this trouble to save a life you don't even know?"
"Because killing her will make you sad, you inept Trollip!"
The Izalith survivor blinked stupidly at his answer, shocked and confused simultaneously before a growl formed on her face.
"DID YOU JUST CALL ME A TROLLIP?!"
"AGAIN, DID I HAPPEN TO STUTTER?!" William yelled back behind his human shield and Oscar just groaned out in frustration – he should have really left the silver-haired undead in his cell that fateful day.
To be fair, William had been on his best behavior thus far with the Daughter of Chaos until very recently – and by that he meant that there had just been mundane silence for literally six minutes before the undead had opted to start this game of insult roulette.
Quelana had actually explained her history and family tree to them after they had begun to traverse the suddenly winding passageway to Quelaag's boss room. To William's chagrin, she had even told them about her deformed little brother who was publicly not supposed to exist until Eingyi spilt the beans like the typical idiot he was. That had thrown a wrench in the Thief's plan to drop an elusive knowledge bomb about confidential information before blaming it on Kirk just to see what Quelaag would do to his thorny hide. Oh well, he would just figure out a way to turn big ole Ceaseless back into little Cecil – the name his unimaginative mother dubbed him with upon birth because shit, it was so difficult to name the boy when all the daughter's names in your family started with 'Que'. And they called Gwyn brainless. At least the only name anybody had trouble with in that family was Puff Daddy Nameless'.
"The point of using you as the mediator for our party, and potential bait if it all goes to shit," William received a slap on the chest for the last part, "is because out of the three of us, Quelaag is more likely to recognize you. I say this because one, you're her sister and two, she's obviously never met the two of us before." The undead motioned between himself and Oscar. Quelana snorted but listened all the same. Whether she liked it or not, the sinister sentence sadist in front of her was smarter than he pretended to be. That, and somehow listening to his words seemed to calm down her frayed nerves when she thought about reuniting with the sibling she had left to rot for centuries in a hole next to their ruined home.
"Of course, whether your sister snaps outta that 'beast mode' you keep going on about or just opts to skewer you because you've been a shitty elder sibling, is anyone's guess."
Her confidence that this would work suddenly fell back down to her hyperventilating sense of cowardice.
"Or maybe because she's half beast, she'll see you as one of her own due to your bloodline and try to mate with you. Who knows how long she's been able to bust a nut, ya' know what I'm saying Oz?"
Quelana forced air into her tightly clenching set of lungs at the thought of a feral Quelaag doing just that. The redhead was certainly capable of it since she was always more tomboyish than the rest of them but to imagine her own sister attempting to deflower her…
She shivered. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and did nothing for her self-esteem since she was the one taking charge in all this. And for the love of her mother, William needed to shut up before she completely lost the fleeting optimism in her head.
"But above all else, remember not to appear hostile. That mutated lower half of hers must be sentient from the stuff you've told me and Oscar. And whilst its possible for her and her spidery legs to have some kind of mental link, that doesn't mean it won't hesitate to chomp your head off and regurgitate on your fire-proof corpse."
And just like that, she was scared shitless.
"Meh, I'm just rambling at this point. You'll do just fiiiine." William said in reassurance as he slapped her on the back, making her stumble forward and nearly crash into the fog wall they had finally arrived at.
Quelana shot him a glare promising endless hours of torture and violence to which he simply grinned back like a happy clapper cheering on his good friend. Her lips curled into a snarl as he waved to her placidly. Firstly, they were only five feet away from each other, there was no damn point to wave from such a close distance. And two, he looked at her as if her silent threats of punishment would be equivalent to a lecture from some old, washed up instructor in a rural township miles away from civilization. She glowered before running a hand through her hair. She really hated him and she had just met him. It was just a shame she couldn't bring herself to blast him with her pyromancy. How was her self-restraint on her magic so much stronger than her emotional fuse?
"We'll be cheering you on from the sidelines," her snarling dog-routine dropped when she turned to Oscar and found him with his helmet off and bright blue eyes staring at her with warmth. She couldn't help it as she smiled back, the nervousness washing off her shoulders almost instantly.
"Thank you, Oscar."
"My pleasure, Lady Quelana." The Astorian beamed before pulling out an old talisman from his side and muttering a short prayer.
"May the Flames guide thee."
She smiled kindly, a little bit of her cool, collected self back. She was glad he was the Chosen Undead. He held up the attitude the undead of legend should possess. Quite honestly, if William had been in his position, she would have scoffed and waited for the world to end already. No way she would accept that fool of being hers and the world's savior.
William felt the urge to sneeze as Quelana passed through the fog wall and he quietly wondered what scintillating beauty was talking about him this time before Oscar tapped him on the shoulder.
"Are you ready?" the knight asked, helm on and sword drawn. The Thief grinned back, already liking the newfound confidence his Chosen Undead candidate was displaying.
"Damn straight I am."
And with that, they both waltzed through the oppressive fog like arachnophobic men that had a hard-on for half spider women. Or at least… that was William's case. Normally speaking, he was terrified of spiders, especially after that time a senior in high school had gotten his mates to hold William by his arms and legs on a table as a wild tarantula crawled around his exposed manhood in a twisted game of 'how long will little William keep on swinging'.
Inside Quelaag's Domain, it was less than ideal. Sure, the walls were still covered with an abnormal number of large, medium and small sized webbed-eggs, the arid humidity in the room felt like enough to melt his teeth off, the floor was a variety of browns and in certain areas, the old cubic tiles were still visible under the black soot and sand.
The less than ideal part were the two women stationed within these iconic walls of rock, sand, webbing – seriously, how much demonic thread had Quelaag pulled out from her ass to coat this place like wallpaper – and grime.
"Oh dear," Oscar mouthed as he saw Quelana engaged in a fierce battle of tag with an entity of everlasting chaos flame, prickly hair, spindly legs, enormous midsections and one of the most gruesome insectoid faces he had ever come across. Additionally, the gigantic spider seemed to have the upper half of a woman within its center, swinging around a gruesome blade of sharp shells and spines while both topless and angry. "This isn't good at all. It isn't good in the slightest!"
He turned to William.
"William. What do we do?!"
The undead, meanwhile, was about ready wet his trousers with something more than just reprocessed Estus. He tuned out everything going on around him as his onyx eyes locked onto the object of his dreams. He ignored the sizzling of lava and the whoosh of a Furysword being swung around. He couldn't hear the pleas of a desperate Quelana attempting to commune with her mutated sister. He couldn't even feel the sweat on his brow as it slid down his cheek and added to his soaked collar. William was just completely transfixed. He had never imaged it would look so damn beautiful.
The combination of beauty and beast, a contrast of savagery and elegance, the pure rivalling of gentle flesh against rough hide – he could see it all. Each step Quelaag took with her arachnid steed made his heart skip a beat, each swing of her sword held by those demonically clawed fingers forced a pleasant shiver to travel up his spine; and every bounce of those heroic orbs on her chest as her fiery hair did its best to shield her modesty caused William to realize just how dry his throat suddenly felt.
A small line of drool leaked from the corner of his mouth as he felt the mutated woman's growl reverberate through his being before he was harshly shaken by Oscar.
"Egad man! Stay sharp, we're in a crisis at the moment!"
The undeads eyes snapped open and the glossy sheen covering them faded as he took a moment to assess the situation.
From what he could tell, their bait hadn't paid off like he had expected it to, and whilst the supposedly un-Milfy Milf of Pyromancy was being a great distraction, they still had yet to call Quelaag off her rampage of angry snarling, sword swinging and the occasional upchuck from her spidery bottom half.
Right. This would make things difficult.
The original plan was to send Quelana in as their trump card to disarm any hostility before ringing the second Bell and proving what aid he could to a dying Quelaan. However, now that she was busy batting away lava globules and chaos blade slashes, that plan seemed positively perforated. Therefore, they had only one more option.
"Oscar, we're switching back to Plan A. Commence with Operation: Slippery Nipple!"
"I wish you wouldn't call our tactics something so crude." The Astorian grimaced behind his helm.
"And I wish the Christmas Special in Japan's KFC would stay available year-round but sometimes you've gotta settle for Ben and Jerry's!"
"I have no idea what that means!"
"And you'll never have to!" William screamed before turning his comrade around to face the two battling beauties. "Now hop to it, goddammit!"
With a punt in the rear for good measure, he sent Oscar sprinting away toward the furious hybrid with red hair. They had already gone over the plan half a dozen times and adjusted any flaws thinkable at the time before both men had agreed on the process of divide and conquer.
Oscar was to be the secondary distraction next to Quelana. Whilst the redhead wouldn't exactly be hard pressed to defend against the two of them, the Astorian would make an excellent addition to the Bait Squad with his surprising sense of agility in weighted armor and general evasiveness in combat. That would keep Quelaag occupied long enough for William to sneak by, ring the Bell and possibly knock her out of that rage mode with a well timed knowledge bomb about the Fair Lady before he was jabbed like a stuffed pig.
He was just hoping whatever dick-faced god watching him didn't decide to mess everything up like they normally did. He really wasn't in the mood for being melted alive and throttled by a snarling Quelaag – as much as his masochistic side really wouldn't mind the glorious sensations.
Carefully walking next to the walls, and skirting around a particularly large puddle of lava that was unconsciously thrown in his direction, William made his way up, around and past Quelaag before his boot reached the first step of the fallen Bell Tower.
When he was halfway up the spiral staircase, he turned back to assess the situation. Quelana and her sister were still engaged in verbal warfare involving lots of pleas, grunts, and snarls; whilst Oscar did his best to avoid being melted alive or chewed into human taffy whilst still managing to deflect the quick, successive strikes from the redhead's Furysword.
The Thief nodded to himself with a grin. Those two would be just fine without him – especially since the undead could barely manage a roly-poly – whilst he did his job in turn. After all, his fake title wasn't just for show (most of the time).
Sprinting up the remaining stairs two at a time, William welcomed the familiar stone floors and extra webbed passageway that led to one unnecessarily large golden bell, a life-sized lever, and the enormous hole in floor that he assumed must have been for a lift system that was unfortunately, never built.
He rolled his shoulders as he approached the lever. It was a massive thing, and if the game held true, he would most certainly throw his back trying to pull it down before that hanging ball set within the bell clanged against its shell. He tapped his pockets and pouches for a moment before sighing out. He didn't have any earplugs either.
He might have been a good fan of the Souls franchise but he was still a stickler for the technicalities. As such, he knew as well as anyone that having to listen to a bell nearly the size of Big Ben's clock face stationed right above him would certainly cause a substantial amount of deafness. Seriously, how the in-game Chosen Undead had done all this shit without a murmur of a word besides 'agh', 'ah' and 'ugh', was astonishing. Or perhaps he had been speaking the entire time but the Dev's had simply cut that out. William wondered whether that "Press Start To Laugh Guy" from YouTube was on to something regarding perpetually mute characters.
Breaking the knuckles in his fingers, the undead reached out to grab the hilt of the filigreed mechanism when he heard a soft, gentle tone bristle against his ears.
He stopped and looked around. Well that was odd. He was sure he heard someone singing for a moment. And if he wasn't hallucinating, he was sure that whatever song was being sung sounded awfully familiar.
William waited a moment more before shaking his head and holding the tip of the lever. Enough fooling around, he was just being a chicken now – forcing his mind to indirectly create false sounds for him to delay pulling down a pedal that would most likely rip his arms out of their sockets due to rust.
Taking a breath, he psyched himself up and prepared to yank the handle down when the same sound from before struck his eardrums like a percussion instrument, making him drop his arms, turn around and close his eyes as the sweet melody drifted pleasantly into his head.
"-ome, to bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguing is done, we'll take our leave and go…"
William blinked owlishly. Was that… Sea Shanty he was hearing? Now way. That was impossible. That was a perfectly Earthen song, and besides, pirates didn't voyage near Lordran. It was a bloody kingdom on a titanic crag. He must be imagining things for sure.
"She had not been two weeks from shore, when on her a right whale bo-"
Okay, maybe he wasn't hallucinating after all. The reason being was because he didn't know half the lyrics to that song like this imaginary voice did. And what a soft voice it was. If he were to believe his gut – which was held true about thirty percent of the time – then the owner of said fanfare would have to be a certain scientifically transformed Izalith survivor with pale white skin.
William grinned as his feet already began to move on its own. Saving the day would have to wait just a bit. He had another urgent appointment to take care of at the moment.
"Ah! Ooh! Gah! Hah-ha!" Oscar chanted with a mixture of expressions behind his helmet as he dueled both Quelaag and her mighty steed. He would have liked to receive some form of aide from Quelana who was currently screaming her lungs out to appeal to her sister's better nature instead of using that ashen staff of hers to do something more than occupy the open air, yet he admitted that she was certainly finding this harder than he was. Not many people could really attest to seeing their long-lost siblings gone feral from demonic magic.
That being said, he was still finding it increasingly difficult to defend against both a gruesome sword and fiery fangs large enough to cleave his head from his shoulders. Additionally, the constant swaying of this woman's breasts in his face was amazingly disorientating, especially when he did his best to look away whilst fighting her. Then again, this was truly magnificent training as William had said it would be. Perhaps he could use this handicap as a lesson to win in the future?
"Waahh… aagh!" he shouted as Quelaag let loose a condensed explosion of chaos flame that ignited against his chest and sent him, as well as fifteen meters of flooring away from her in a shower of sharp rubble.
Oscar panted as he picked up his chipped sword from the floor and stood back up to face a glaring Chaos Sister. Perhaps focusing on actually surviving would be a better ideal right now. And just what was William doing taking so long? He had faith that the silver-haired Thief would complete his task seamlessly, and he would do his best to hold out until that happened but that didn't mean he possessed infinite stamina. As it was he could barely feel his legs. If William didn't do something sooner or later, he doubted whether he or Quelana would manage to see the light at the end of the-
"As far as I've heard, the fight's still on. The line's not cut-"
"-And the whale's not gone! The Wellerman makes his regular call-"
"-To encourage the captain, crew and all."
"Yes, you've got it! One more time then!"
Oscar, Quelana and Quelaag all frowned simultaneously at the two voices loudly echoing from behind the Bell Tower. The Astorian, in particular scrunched his face up in confusion. That second voice sounded suspiciously like-
"William?!" Quelana screamed out in alarm as her sister's face turned into a demonic snarl before her spider-half raced up the stairs and into the Tower.
The knight turned to the Mother of Pyromancy before nodding and racing after the spider woman, intent on protecting their abnormally unpredictable comrade from being turned into monster meat.
Incidentally, the sight the two of them happened to come by after running up a flight of stairs, crossing the distance to the second Bell of Awakening before running down another flight of stairs and into a large alcove, was the outlandish sight of a jolly undead and an equally nude Daughter of Chaos standing by one another, singing the strangest tale either of them had ever heard – Quelaag at the side, just as perplexed.
"Okay, let's go again but I want you to really feel the chorus this time." William said with a gentle pat on Quelaan's shoulder. The woman in turn – who was also half arachnid and nude – merely nodded excitedly with closed eyes before they both took a deep breath.
"Soon may the Wellerman come! To bring us sugar and tea and rum…"
The Astorian and the firstborn of the Witch of Izalith sweat dropped at the sight before sighing loudly. This was not the distraction to the fight they had been expecting at all.
"That's it, my Lady!" William's companions turned their heads to the side to see one of those egg-carrying undead lying on his stomach, a smile on his face as he pumped a slender hand into the air exuberantly.
"Your singing is nothing short of angelic! The gods would have been mesmerized by its beauty, I say! Sing on!"
Oscar and Quelana continued to watch the odd fellow scream and cheer on this 'Lady' of his before he finally noticed the two of them standing there.
"Oh, hello." He said in a nasal tone that still seemed to exude wisdom. "Have you come to meet the Fair Lady?"
Oscar managed a nod. He really didn't know who the Fair Lady was, but he assumed he should just play along anyways.
The man on the ground just smiled kindly before turning to Quelana casually, as if the strange singing duo near them was the most ordinary thing in the world.
"My, you look very much similar to Lady Quelaag. Would you also happen to be seeing the Fair Lady today?"
Quelana merely blinked back dumbly in reply. She should have just gone back to bed after being woken up, she swore.
More chapters will follow suite, just be patient. I've been a little pre-occupied recently.
Also, for those of you wondering if I'm going to pair William with Quelana… yeah, I don't think so. I mean, it's only chapter 14 right now. Let's at least have some more fun before our home boy becomes whipped – both literally and figuratively.