Author's Note: Okay Asuna has vanquished the great Taurus Demon, and now has a chance meeting with the great Sun Bro himself!
Also, I do not own SAO or Dark Souls.
-5-
A Knight of Astora
"Ah, hello! You don't look Hollow, far from it!"
Asuna was a little blown away by this man's radiant appearance, both accented by a glowing sun behind him, and by his oddly charming voice. For this was the first time on her adventures in Lordran that she felt no need to locate her sword in a need of safety.
"I...no, I'm still human." Asuna gave him a smile. "My name is Asuna. It's nice to meet you."
The man, fully dawned in steel armor lined with white leather and green pauldrons, laughed jubilantly, and put a hand over the sun-stitched sigil of red and yellow decorating his chest. "I am Solaire of Astora, an adherent of the Lord of Sunlight."
He turned back to look at the sun. "Now that I am Undead, I have come to this great land, the birthplace of Lord Gwyn, to seek my very own sun!"
"Ehh...?" Asuna did not remember this peculiar face from her brother's early playthrough of Dark Souls, and was surprised by that fact as he seemed to take up most of her focus in the current situation.
Solaire picked up on her shocked expression, and turned to look at her face. "… Do you find that strange? Well, you should! No need to hide your reaction. I get that look all the time! Hah hah hah!"
"Ahaha..." Asuna awkwardly laughed with him as she let out a soft sigh, and walked over to put her hands on the rail of the balcony. "I'm really sorry if I came off as rude just now, it's just nice to find a human in this ugly world...even though this guy is just an NPC who has no idea who or what I am..."
She kept that last part in her mind as they both looked out to catch the sun setting, but Solaire turned slightly her way to continue.
"Oh, ah hah! So, I didn't scare you? I have a proposition, if you have a moment."
"A proposition?" Asuna seemed perplexed, but decided to let the man talk. "Sure, absolutely!"
Solaire nodded, and continued with a voice muffled by his steel helm. "The way I see it, our fates appear to be intertwined. In a land brimming with Hollows, could that really be mere chance?"
He let out a hand, and waited for her to react. "So, what do you say? Why not help one another on this lonely journey?"
Asuna felt a beam of light hit her chest, and let the virtual warmth take over her mind as she grinned back to him. She needed to find Kirito, and this man Solaire seemed to be the best ally to have for finding him. "Yes, if you can help me find my missing friend, then I would be glad to help you too."
After Asuna shook his hand, Solaire chimed off again. "This pleases me greatly! Well then, take this..."
He handed Asuna a White Soap Stone, and carried on as his eyes met the sunlight from before. "We are amidst strange beings, in a strange land. The flow of time itself is convoluted, with heroes centuries old phasing in and out. The very fabric wavers, and relations shift and obscure. There's no telling how much longer your world and mine will remain in contact."
His dialogue was ominous, and it left a short chill on her skin. Solaire pointed at the white stone still held in her hand. "But, use this, to summon one another as spirits, cross the gaps between the worlds, and engage in jolly co-operation!"
"Jolly co-operation..." Asuna felt more warmth take her heart, and thought about finding Kirito now more than ever. "I like the sound of that. Thank you."
Solaire nodded firmly, but put a hand on the pommel of his sunlight long sword sheathed at his belt. "Of course, we are not the only ones engaged in this. But I am a warrior of the sun! Spot my summon signature easily by its brilliant aura. If you miss it, you must be blind! Hah hah hah!"
"I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for it." Asuna nodded confidently while turned to head back up the balcony stairs, but briefly glanced back at Solaire with one foot on a step. "U-uh, will you be waiting here until I need your help?"
Solaire nodded, but made a quick turn to capture more of the setting sun's brilliant energy. "I will stay behind, to gaze at the sun. The sun is a wondrous body. Like a magnificent father! If only I could be so grossly incandescent!"
The tranquil voice of Solaire lingered in the back of Asuna's mind as she left the knight to ponder the wonders of sunlight, and thus carried on to her own adventure once again as she passed underneath the bridge tower and onto a new roadway that crossed over the larger valley of the Undead Burg. She noticed the expansive bridge was dotted with bricks and random undead enemies, which left her feeling like she had entered the nasty world of Dark Souls proper once again.
"Wow, this is really kind of a neat view of the town below. It's sort of weird thinking that I was just down there before the Taurus Demon boss fight." She failed to realize how expansive the upper Undead Burg was before now, and with the omniscient view of the bridge from above, she started thinking back to her passage through the village.
It also reminded her about all the dreadful yet valuable sights she found as well.
"The Taurus Demon is down, but the Undead Merchant mentioned a goat-demon, and a dragon moving into..." Her feet froze to the stone of the bridge as her eyes grew wide with remembrance. Asuna darted past two Undead enemies, and leaped for a nook that came off the main road of the bridge as a great column of fire scraped the expanse of the bridge like water through a canyon. She turned her head away from the intense heat of the road, and opened one eye to see a great red Hellkite dragon breathing fire onto the bridge to take out all below. It was now harder to breath, but the fire let up eventually, and allowed Asuna to rest her head against the stone wall behind her.
"Ugh, idiot!" Asuna cursed herself. "You can't go dying before you find Kirito! You have no idea what happens to you if your character dies in this game. Those creepy kidnappers probably have some nasty plan in mind if you fail to win the game, let alone die to one of these stupid traps or enemies!"
She regathered herself, and took a tour down the staircase in front of her spot, finding a drawn metal ladder along the way that over looked an old bonfire she discovered earlier. She connected her path to the fire, and slowly devised her next strategy. The quick-working cleric had remembered the side of the bridge that the dragon left off at, and made sure to round back up to the top layer of the passage to make her presence known.
"Yaghh!" Asuna spun around the upper left annex of the bridge, and journeyed out to the main part of the structure to challenge the great red beast with soaring wings and a deadly weapon for a tail. Asuna ran beneath the monster, and swiped at the legs of the great dragon with her razor sharp rapier, but noticed soon after that the hellkite's monstrous tail had come around to revolt in anger. It sent her flying to the other side of the bridge, and just as she raised her small shield to defend the next blow, a large cloud of fire came instead, and quickly roasted the poor heroine to a crisp.
YOU DIED
The famous words glossed over Asuna's blackened view like bleeding red sores, and suddenly all in her vision was lost. Her screen went completely dark, and her breathing stopped. Until it all shot back into her lungs moments later as she emerged at the last bonfire she rested at underneath the fiery bridge from above. Her lungs hyperventilated, and her eyes were wide open as Asuna sat up on her palms. Her armor was still in-tact, and her weapons were still at her side and back. It only took her a brief minute to realize what all she had lost.
Her souls. Tens of thousands of souls earned from killing the Taurus Demon and several other enemies along the way. She had forgotten to spend souls and level up her character after defeating the giant boss, and now paid the price with a soul meter set to zero. She also lost her humanity. No, not the small consumable objects found dotting the landscape of Lordran, but her actual humanity. The kind that kept her heart beating as normal, and her skin looking fresh and alive.
She was now Hollowed. Dead and decrepit skin, but with the eyes, and movements, and the will of a living person. Unlike Kirito after emerging from the Undead Asylum, though, Asuna was a fully-clothed Hollow who appeared rotten and deceased to all that could see her.
"Aggghhh!" Asuna's shrieking voice rang loudly through the bridge corridor the moment she looked down to feel the wrinkly, dried skin on her forearms. Her voice then turned to a horrible guttural sound as her hands passed over her face, and she felt that a similar deadly pruning had taken affect there as well. She rolled over on all fours, and felt her stomach heave a dry bit of air in response to the grossly new appearance taking her body. Then she threw up, and coughed horribly while trying to regain her strength. She tried to collect her mind, but it seemed rather hard to do at the moment now that she had to go on looking the way she did.
She leaned back up, and looked at the now piercing bonfire in front of her. Her skin was cold, and bonfire was the only feeling of warmth she could find, other than the now burning sensation covering her right shoulder marking her Dark Sign.
"Ugh, where is all my humanity?" Asuna tried to locate her desired choice through the nearby bonfire menu, but she did notice that the game menu would not allow her to kindle the waypoint, or reverse her hollow status. She started to panic even more as she reared away from the weakening flames, but suddenly remembered she had a small stack of item humanities built up from before.
"Oh no...I hope those things don't disappear like souls do when I...oh whew! They're still here..."
Asuna swiped over the item, then cracked the humanity to absorb a spendable point that she could later use to convert her player form back to human. After earning her humanity once again, the same bizarre affect loomed over her as it did Kirito.
HUMANITY RESTORED
From there she could now reverse her hollowing at the bonfire. Asuna's brain had felt like it inflated to twice its size after earning her humanity again. Her eyes grew wide, and as the fare skin color rejoined her body, she could remember the face of her beloved Kirito once again.
"Oh my god...that was so weird. Did I just forget who Kirito was? Why did I just…?" She looked down at her fully-fleshed hands, and took a few more breaths to gather more of a clue.
"When we go hollow, our minds get wiped?...That's even worse than I thought!" She also remembered what the evil men who kidnapped her and Kirito said before she entered the game. Some unknown terrible outcome awaited her and Kirito both if they were to die while hollowed. They did not explicitly explain the outcome, but judging by the way they refereed to SAO and Akihiko Kayaba, and judging by the difficulty of this game, she could only deduce one thing.
"No...no no no I have to find Kirito! If he dies while he's in hollowed-mode…!"
She ran back out to the lower ledge of the bridge hanging on top of the Undead Burg, but stopped her mad rushing feet the moment a realization crossed her mind. "I don't even know where Kirito is! I'm not even sure he's logged into the game yet...but I do know what my objective is, and I can only imagine he'll have the same quest as me. I'll try and Ring the Bell of Awakening like I had been, and maybe I'll run into Kirito along the way!"
She also remembered that the dragon who roasted her alive moments ago was still guarding her pile of loose souls. Remembering how many she had on her at death, Asuna drew her rapier once again along the middle of the bridge, and rushed the fell beast to try and earn back her belongings.
She rolled out of the way from the first fireball, and landed swiftly on her own bloodstain glowing green with the dropped souls from before.
RETRIEVAL
Asuna had earned back her souls and any loose humanity from before, but once again, suffered the same fate as she did before. A tail to the head, a breath of fire to the face, and a quick death for our lonely heroine sent her right back to the bonfire from before.
After losing her mind and stomach all over again, she cracked open another humanity, though now she was running low on those thankful little items. As she returned to her human form, her stomach felt better, but her head was starting to hurt, a painful migraine of frustration was taking her forehead as it did every frustrated Dark Souls player.
"Ugh! How am I supposed to get my stuff back if the dragon is standing there guarding my bloodstain? Can I even beat that thing at my current level...agh this is so frustrating!"
Asuna was not so much losing hope, but rather starting to feel the wrath that followed every adventure through Lordran. Dark Souls, unlike the titles of SAO or ALO, was a game of trial and error, guess and check. She had to test things multiple times, and accept failing to get past her woes.
This however, was still unacceptable for the former Lightning Flash of the Knights of the Blood Oath guild.
"The problem is I can't even hit it without getting fired at, but I can't keep dying and using up these little humanity tokens. I haven't even tried hitting it though, so maybe it's weak to something? It might be one of those glass cannon bosses...oh who am I kidding, that's probably not even a thing in this game! Ugh, there has to be some other method to fight this thing. It's not even fair..."
Asuna was still on the lower section of the walkway. She turned to go off in the direction of the bridge that once housed the great Taurus Demon, but stopped as she noticed a great red tail dangling from the side of the lower bridge she was currently standing under.
"If that dragon's tail would move over here where I could reach it with my sword, but even then it'd be too far away. Maybe I could go up one more time just to make him move..."
It was swaying back and forth rather teasingly, and almost invited her to come up with a new set of ideas for how to carry out her mission.
"Well, before I go ring that bell, it will definitely make my life easier to deal with that dragon, and get all my souls back. I think I have an idea...but I'll need more souls and that undead merchant to help me carry it out!"
And so after hours of earning back a small worth of souls, Asuna finished farming enemies throughout the Undead Burg, lower Firelink Shrine, and the extended New Londo ruins she explored before. She now had several hundred souls worth of gear, which was purchased at the Undead Merchant. Asuna now found herself in the exact same location as she was in earlier that day. A freshly dropped bow from dozens of slain hollows, and a new set of arrows acquired from the Undead Merchant.
Asuna never fancied herself a bow-wielder, that was more of the niche role for her sharpshooter friend, Sinon. However, when dealing with a live enemy capable of flight, a long-ranged attack style probably seemed to be the best strategy.
Here she was, arrow after arrow, hit after hit beneath the great bridge of the Undead Burg. The red tail of the glorious Hellkite Dragon kept presenting itself to her as it rolled off the edge of the bridge, but her arms were starting to grow tired, and her shoulders were starting to grow sore.
"I can't keep doing this..." She sighed into the air as her arm slowly reached back for what might have been the fortieth arrow, but in all honesty she had lost count. "I almost lost my life again trying to get my souls back on the bridge, but now it might not even be worth it if these arrows can't hurt the thing."
Her luck was running low, and in all truth she had no idea what she was really doing. Asuna's experience from the video game world came primarily from Aincrad and the Land of Fairies. SAO and ALO bosses had their own hit boxes that were totally different that bosses in Dark Souls. In her mind, she felt like it had to be a perfect plan. Even if the damn tail kept moving back and forth over two different perches across the valley.
What Asuna failed to understand, though, may have been her advantage here. Even in the modern era, the game of Dark Souls offers several glitches and bugs that sometimes break a hero's career, but can also make it better.
Although she missed her mark on a few occasions, Asuna's umpteenth shot toward the tail of the drake landed in a more painful way that her others. The great red beast shrieked with pain, and instantly Asuna's inventory was awarded with a new item.
"A Drake Sword? This looks like a pretty important weapon! It might be kind of heavy though, so I'll want to put some points into..." Midway through her thought, a great crash hit the water below the bridge, and Asuna stuck her head out wearily to see that the mighty Hellkite Dragon was dead and no more after her exhilarating fight.
"No way, I killed it just by hitting it's tail! I must be getting the hang of this game after all!" Asuna Yuuki felt a new warm wave of energy pass over her shoulders, and allowed her smiling attitude to lift her spirits up to the top of the bridge, which was now totally dragon free. "I may not even need Kirito to beat this game after all! ...Dragonslayer Asuna...I really like the sound of that!"
Just as she ran to the end, a smile lit up on her face as she saw her souls and bloodstain. Asuna reached out to grab the pile of green energy sitting over her most-recent spot of death, until a pike came out from the edge of her view, and jammed itself into her side.
An enemy now set loose from the other end of the bridge impaled her side, and sent Asuna falling over the edge. Not only had she died and turned hollow like before, but she finally lost all those precious souls she spent hours trying to protect and retrieve.
This was turning out to be a much harder task than the Lightning Flash had signed up for.
And our lady newb gets the newb sword! Will she use it? I dunno...also yes it can now be confirmed that this is in-fact a variant of the the remastered version. That Hellkite isn't supposed to die by the tail method in the original game, but that's what's funny able this clunky mess of a game, you never know what can happen!
Asuna has a little more experience underneath her belt, but she died again! Thankfully she was already human at the end, but now she died twice without retrieving her souls, so all those precious goodies are gone...this is probably where the story will start to shed some unwanted PTSD for several readers.
New chapter soon! Stay healthy until then!