"Welcome to the Velvet Room."
These were the first words Astaire heard as he began to come back to his senses again. He wasn't quite sure what had happened to relieve him of them in the first place, but that wasn't his biggest concern. His eyes opened slowly, meeting the roof of the place he now sat in. It was a low roof, and for a panicked moment, Astaire briefly considered that he had been slid into a coffin at some point. Thankfully, this was not the case. As Astaire righted himself in the seat he found himself in, he met the eyes of a very curious looking man on the other side of this "Velvet Room."
The man's face barely moved as he spoke. "Hmm… most interesting. Most interesting indeed." He said slowly. His eyes seemed almost maniacal, but his voice was soothing and was brimming with an impression of deep wisdom held within each word. He peered over his comically long nose, sizing up Astaire as he sat before him. The aforementioned knight gawked around the enclosed area, seeing a foggy environment passing by them outside several of the small windows embedded in the sides. A distinct rumbling sound could be heard underneath this area, but Astaire couldn't quite place what it was. He had never seen anything like this before.
Speaking of things he wasn't seeing, Astaire recalled that this wasn't the place where he had lost consciousness. "Where… am I? This certainly doesn't look like Firelink Shrine." As he pushed himself slightly off the chair to examine his surroundings further, Astaire noted that he felt much lighter and less bulky than he had in ages. It only occurred to him then, but upon looking at himself he saw that his armour had gone. In its place, he wore a long blue trench coat with thick golden buttons running up the front. "…and where are my things?!" He said loudly.
The man simply smiled his wide smile as he answered. "First things first. My name is Igor. I am delighted to make your acquaintance."
"Ah…" Astaire berated himself for forgetting his manners despite his situation, it was unbecoming of a knight. "I am Knight Astaire, an adherent of the Lord of Sunlight." He replied.
Igor seemed satisfied with his response. "Very good. As for where you are, this place exists between dreams and reality, mind and matter. It exists, but to some it has never existed at all. Only those who have entered a contract can come here." Upon saying this, Igor pointed a finger in Astaire's direction. "…Except you, it would appear."
Before Astaire could begin to demand an explanation, Igor gave him one. "It is not very often that we receive uninvited guests in the Velvet Room. Truth be told, the parameters that allowed for our meeting here have… intrigued me."
"You and I both." Astaire added. "This doesn't feel like the sort of place where someone could simply waltz in uninvited. Do you have any idea how I got here?"
"An idea, yes. But it is little more than that, a theory." Said Igor. "In the time you have sat in this room, I have looked extensively at the events leading up to your arrival. If my understanding is sound, I think we might get to the bottom of this." Finally moving something other than his finger, the mysterious fellow waved his hand, producing a small television atop the table in front of him. Oddly, Astaire felt a sort of familiarity with the device, despite one having never been in Lordran.
The screen flashed on, showing the crystal cavern which Astaire had met Rise in. "Let us start at the beginning. I believe you said it best yourself," Igor began, before the TV took over.
"...the flow of time and space is a little queer, with warriors and legends from across the world congregating and phasing in and out of existence…" Astaire's voice said from within the box. Needless to say the voice's owner was curious as to how exactly Igor had procured footage of him saying this, but he was more interested in exactly where he was going with it all.
"It is my belief that this unsteady flow of time and space in your dimension caused it to… collide with the one you ended up in. However, the world has done so many times before. You did not even notice the change."
"…Hm. So in other words, Lordran's abnormal nature caused me to walk into another dimension entirely? How very odd." Astaire thought to himself as he let Igor continue.
The screen changed, showing the outside of the desert-like area where Astaire and Rise had met everyone else. "At this moment, the worlds became intertwined. The other world sensed your presence and applied its rules to create the areas you trekked through during your stay. Picture it like your world keeping you on a leash, and the other refusing to let go of you."
Astaire could feel a headache quickly begin to form behind his eyes with all this thinking.
"This is likely the cause of your appearance, as well as the prolonged nature of your stay." The screen flashed once again, showing the inside of the pyramid, as well as other architecture Astaire recognised. The boulders and stone walkways from Sen's Fortress. The mounds of bodies from not-quite-New-Londo and finally, Firelink Shrine.
"This is where things become… complex." Igor lamented, although not as much as Astaire, who was under the impression that things had been quite complex enough for his liking thus far. "It was during this time that you met your shadow. You denied it, causing it to turn on your new comrades. Shortly afterwards, after the shadow was weakened, you made a very unconventional decision."
Somehow, Astaire could tell where this was going.
"Instead of accepting your shadow as a part of yourself, you outright destroyed it. Abolished it. Obliterated it beyond any recognition, and this is where our current predicament lies."
"Wait a minute." The young knight interrupted, earning a curious look from Igor. "Are you telling me… that wasn't an impostor? It was actually me?" Igor nodded in confirmation. "Oh, curses. This is all my fault…"
"Do not despair. There may be a better outcome to this than you know." Admittedly, this made Astaire curious. Raising his head, he listened on as Igor continued. "Your destroying of your shadow did two things. The first was that it destroyed the world created in your mind, where you stood. At that moment, all was wiped from the world, presumably because of the damage caused in your mind due to the mental assault you dealt on yourself."
He could have been taking this the wrong way, but Astaire could have sworn that Igor was trying to say he had given himself brain damage. "The second thing this attack did was sever your link to this world. Due to this, for a fleeting moment, the two worlds had their connection broken. You could not return to your world, because it really no longer existed. Likewise, you could not stay rooted in the other world, as it too had been destroyed completely. This left only one place for you to go…"
"A place between dream, reality, mind and matter…" Echoing Igor's words, Astaire finally came to understand. For a moment, all was lost to him on the physical plane, leaving him stranded in the next best thing.
With an air of finality, Igor swept his hand over the TV, replacing it with a single card, a woman lying across it horizontally, with some manner of beasts underneath. "Your arcana would have been that of Lust. However…" The card shattered as Igor touched it, splitting into microscopic pieces. "…you have not accepted yourself, and as such do not hold the right to wield such power. My condolences."
Waving his hand dismissively, Astaire tried to put on a smile. "It's fine, really. My time in Lordran has given my plenty of power, I shall require no other to perform my duty." As the thought of performing his knightly deeds came to mind, Astaire couldn't help but wonder how exactly he would perform his tasks inside this strange room he was in. He voiced his concerns to Igor, who summoned another TV, a bigger one this time, in front of him.
"While you cannot return to Lordran, you can return to another dimension all the same. The world of humans awaits beyond this gate, if you wish to enter." Well, that was all Astaire needed to hear. Not that Igor was bad company or anything, but at the same time he felt that living amongst other people who wouldn't try to kill him sounded like a nice offer. He reached out his gloved hand to the TV, before stopping to look at Igor once again.
"Wait, that doesn't explain why you changed me into this garb! I'm sorry for being so insistent but I need to know why you did it." He said, pinching the lapels of his new jacket.
"Hmmm. I'm afraid I only have Margaret's word to go on. From what she told me, you were somewhat... under-equipped, upon your arrival."
Wait. Wait.
Astaire immediately turned bright pink. Margaret was a woman's name. He'd showed up in this odd room and was manhandled by a woman because he'd shown up under-equipped.
He gulped with quite some effort. "So she's the one who gave me these clothes then?" Think of the clothes. Think of the clothes. Not showing up indisposed and unconscious. The clothes. "Where is she now? I feel quite guilty that I can't provide her my gratitude." Though it was only right and seemed appropriate, there wasn't another person in the world Astaire would rather not have met eyes with.
"She is absent at the moment, having left to perform other duties before you awoke. I shall pass on your regards when she returns."
Phew. That was a relief. All the same, Astaire felt he had to ask. "So, this Margaret... what does she look like?" Or rather, was Astaire undressed by someone who didn't look like Maneater Mildred without the sack?
Igor merely chuckled to himself, his smile seeming to grow wider at the question. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I don't think it's my place to say." Sly devil. Astaire chuckled alongside him, before taking a deep breath and touching the television screen. A strange sensation overcame him and before he knew it, Astaire had been pulled into the device entirely, some invisible force having grabbed him and taken him by surprise. He fell through the gateway between the worlds, seeing no end in sight while his original entrance fell away from above him.
The TV disappeared as Igor tapped the top of the device. His hand resumed its original position under his nose, followed shortly by his eyes closing as they resumed their default position.
"Interesting indeed. It is not often one's first visit to the Velvet Room is also their last." He thought.