While the humans sat at the bonfire, Quelaag was hard at work. Siegmeyer returned in what seemed like an instant, and he and Oscar discussed matters of knighthood while Beatrice practiced her sorcery. For his part, Lex was content to watch Quelaag weave. While sitting at the bonfire, everything flowed hazily like a dream. While he looked directly at her, she moved like normal while his companions slowed to a stop; when he turned back to them, the Chaos Witch became a flurry of motion.

It was the sort of thing a lone Undead gazing only into the bonfire wouldn't notice, he mused. Perhaps that was why the Crestfallen Warrior sat near the bonfire but not at it. Perhaps sitting at a bonfire indefinitely would be an easy way to wait for the end of the Age of Fire, like that scarecrow in Majora's Mask. This set him on the trail of considering what he would have done if he'd been dragged inside other games instead of Dark Souls. While he was distracted by that train of thought, Quelaag had neared the halfway point, a simple but sturdy rope ladder trailing down the cliffside.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over them. Lex looked up, wondering if some high-altitude wind had finally moved the clouds. What he saw was a murder. A horrible mass of giant crows like the one that transported prisoners from the Asylum were descending upon the Fortress.

"Everyone, get up, now!"

As the others broke from their timelessness and looked up to where Lex was pointing, the crows stabilized above the Fortress, forming a vortex that shadowed the entire rooftop. They were far too high for even Beatrice's cheating range to hit, but they didn't seem to be interested in the Undead. Within moments, they were breaking off in pairs – one would harass Quelaag while the other would pick at the ladder. The birds were cautious and fled before the Chaos Witch could get in a solid hit, but there were enough of them that she wouldn't stand a chance if they made a suicidal charge.

"Quelaag, get out of there!" the cleric whisper-shouted into his hand. "We can think of a way to kill the crows and try another ladder when they're dead."

"Quelaag will not flee from Anor Londo's childish tricks," she huffed.

"Look, I'm just saying that losing a girl before the first date is bad even by my standards."

She didn't reply, but she leapt from the cliffside and into the open air, just beneath the murder. Some of the crows broke off to dive-bomb her while she floated helplessly, but as they closed in, a sphere of pink energy exploded around her, vaporizing them. As she fell, she whipped out a part of the ladder she'd been working on and flung it upward, grabbing a number of the birds. Their mad struggle for freedom slowed her descent, and she threw them to the roof at the last moment to cushion her landing. She rose amidst the sound of breaking bones just in time for the humans to arrive.

"Holy crap, that was awesome!" Lex said.

"Perhaps a bit brutal," Siegmeyer added, still bitter about the giant.

"True, but we're better for it," Oscar said with an air of finality.

Siegmeyer took the hint and stared up at the crows silently. Beatrice complained under her breath about how many more she could have killed if she'd been within reach.

"I do hope you have a plan, Prophet," Quelaag said. "I dare not remain here long now that Anor Londo is aware of my presence."

"Actually, I have the impression that what's left of Anor Londo is just as ignorant as we're supposed to be. No blue phantoms yet."

Quelaag winced.

"Pray you are wrong, Prophet. Even the Lord of Sunlight was wary of the Raven-Haired Witch. I don't wish to imagine what she could do with no one to stay her hand."

"What if I told you she's already been messing with us?"

"Then I have no reason to remain here. I will not endanger my family by involving myself in a feud with that monster. I wish you the best of luck."

"I, uh, understand, I guess," Lex said, sighing.

"You make an excellent couple," Beatrice jeered. "I knew spiders didn't have spines, but what's your excuse, Lex?"

"You dare insult Quelaag, human?" the Chaos Witch spat, flames venting from her spider body's sides.

"You're just the guardian of a Bell, bitch. Old news. We should have just killed you so I wouldn't have had to sit through all that touching family shit. We've been sucking down souls throughout this stupid-ass Prophecy and becoming more powerful. I could probably kill you with both hands behind my back by now."

"You insolent-!"

"Oh, what's wrong? You going to self-destruct just like mommy dearest?"

Quelaag faltered but then snarled, "How do you know that, human?!"

"I have my ways."

"Prophet!" Quelaag roared.

"I didn't-"

"This is not the time for that!" Oscar snapped. "Witches, figure out a way to get us up there or shut up! Lex, what do you know about Velka?"

Beatrice looked furious for a moment but then smirked. Quelaag's Furysword burned white-hot, but she held her tongue. Lex glanced back and forth between them, wondering how much of the Witch's ultimate fate was a secret anyway.

"Basically nothing," he began. "She was more or less removed from the ga- uh, history. Most of her domain passed to Gwyndolin or his domain was naturally similar to hers or something. Her demons and a now-dead Pardoner got sealed away in the Painted World.

"Well this is great…" the knight groaned.

"Hey Beatrice, can you fly?" Lex said suddenly.

"That broomstick shit is a dumbass legend."

"I meant in general. No super-jumping either?"

"Kid, are you all right? That sort of magic is all fairy tale shit."

Lex shrugged.

"So is most of this. We're in Lordran for crying out loud. There's a drider standing beside me."

"A what?"

"The thing that Quelaag is. Spiderlegs. Speaking of which, Quelaag, can you fly?"

She glared at him. He waved his arms in the air.

"I'm not a physicist. I don't know how much thrust is necessary, but I thought maybe you could if you shot a bunch of fire at the ground. It would have been awesome, like that Gundam horse."

"I'm going to stop you before you ask if I can fly," Oscar interrupted. "We need to consider a different solution."

"Oho! Maybe not, Oscar," Siegmeyer said. "We have passed Lord Sen's tests with valor, and he has given us permission to continue to Anor Londo. Could we not ask him if he would send his flying metal guardian to disperse these troublesome birds?"

"That… might work," the other knight agreed. "I don't want to go back into the Fortress if I can help it. That might be the only option. Lex?"

"I'm still super disappointed that Beatrice doesn't have the super-jump, partially because that was one of the best parts of Morrowind and partially because she's halfway to being a hacker already, so she might as well go all the way."

"Lex, focus."

"Not sure what we could do, honestly. None of us are any good at archery. We could maybe try to make a deal with Alvina and get that fake Pharis to help us. I'm more worried about what will happen if we get past this, honestly. I don't even want to imagine crossing the archer bridge while being attacked by crows."

"Well, Lex," Siegmeyer said, "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Oscar groaned.

"I should have just hollowed in the Asylum."

He crossed his arms in thought and looked up at the swirling vortex of feathers. At last, the final anchor point had been picked away, and the ladder fell to the roof in a heap. It probably wasn't damaged much, but trying to fight the birds while climbing was a death sentence. He sighed and at last turned to Quelaag.

"You fought the everlasting dragons. How is it that Undead and giant crows are a threat to you?"

"Lex, take note. This knight is my favorite human already," she mocked.

"I was trying not to judge, because honestly, Mildred murders you really easily. Like, I could actually do something else during the fight and just look over occasionally to see if you were dead."

"Yet I bested you twice."

"Excuse me for not being able to fight and seduce you at the same time."

"Focus!" Oscar interrupted again.

"I apologize," Quelaag hummed. "I should mature enough not to play with my food. To answer your question, I must admit my sisters and I have all grown much weaker since we fled Izalith. Weak enough that it is as you say – it is not altogether impossible to be bested by Undead adventurers. I dare not provoke Velka's wrath because even together, we would be no match for her if she saw fit to destroy us."

"You know more about her than Lex, then?"

"Perhaps. I know little more than anyone else who knew Anor Londo in its prime, but that seems to have been an eternity ago now. She was a sort of monster. Her priests didn't believe in her so much as accept her as fact. She required no offerings or prayers. Wickedness itself seemed to sustain her.

Deicide is the greatest of sins, so the execution of deities was reserved for her alone. So terrifying was the shadow she cast that she never needed perform that duty. The great crows and the crow demons were her servants, though their origins are-"

Lex had raised his hand.

"What?" she sighed.

"I know! The crow demons were her most fanatically dedicated servants. I don't know about the crows or whether Snuggly is one of them."

"Thank you for that irrelevant tangent. Let me conclude by saying that the Lord of Sunlight was the only god who would openly stand against her. If there are no gods left in Anor Londo to so much as slow her down, then you face a grave enemy indeed. I will take my leave before she counts me among you."

"Bwuck bwuck!"

Quelaag had turned to leave when Beatrice began making chicken noises. The Chaos Witch's glare could melt stone.

"I'm sorry," Beatrice started. "It's just that since we were talking about birds already…"

"Quelaag will not be mocked."

"Then what the hell have I been doing?"

Quelaag took a deep breath.

"Lex, are you willing to make sacrifices for this relationship?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, that's part of any relationship, right? I don't-"

"Good man."

She scooped him up and drew him close.

"This is kind of sudden, I-"

Abruptly, she bit into his neck. He tensed at first but quickly relaxed and then grew limp as the color drained from his face. After a long moment, she dropped him. He stumbled but remained standing.

"That's not how I imagined necking would be like at all," he said tiredly before he slumped against a wall and sat down.

Quelaag snorted.

"I get it now, though," Lex continued. "Just like a Chaos weapon. You're not very powerful without humanity. You need humanity to live, don't you? I always wondered why the Daughters were pushovers compared to the Four Knights."

In response, the loose wreath of flame hanging over her spider body roared into a flowing mane, the jets that occasionally shot from her legs erupted continuously, and the Furysword's aura thickened and grew to extend well beyond the blade itself.

"Wait, is that a thing you can learn?" the cleric coughed. "I want to be the Burnt Ivory King too."

The Chaos Witch ignored him and stomped toward Beatrice, dripping molten stone as she walked.

"Siegmeyer, I think we should-" Oscar started.

The older knight had interposed himself between the witches.

"Now see here, you fiend! From the moment you arrived, you have been nothing but violent! I don't care what sort of pact the good prophet may have made with you, but I am bound by no such restrictions! I will not allow you to harm another of my companions!"

Quelaag cackled and brandished the Furysword idly.

"You are brave and loyal, if a fool, Onion Knight. I can respect that, perhaps."

She craned her human body to look over him. Her eyes were glowing coals now as she met Beatrice's overconfident gaze.

"Watch, little human. Behold what it truly means to be a witch."

Siegmeyer swung his zweihander defensively, but Quelaag leapt backward. Before the knight could close the gap, she turned and lunged onto the cliffside, storming up toward the looming vortex of crows. A few broke off cautiously and tried to knock her loose from the stone, but she didn't so much as slow down. Her crooked spider legs bent in strange ways, reaching around to impale the birds against the cliff face as she ran. As she came in line with the murder, an arm of the storm reached out to brush her off the cliff despite casualties.

Rather than wait for them, she kicked off the wall with a burst of flame, shooting through them like a meteor. As she fell, her spider sprayed lava in a circle, sending a dozen crows shrieking to the ground. Instead of simply tumbling through the air, she swung toward the cliff again on a thread she'd stuck to the wall when she jumped. As she neared it, she shot another jet of flame to angle her swing sideways and broke into a dead sprint with the extra momentum. More crows came at her, but without the extra speed from dive-bombing, they couldn't reach her before she had climbed above the flock.

Higher and higher she climbed, until she had left the cliffside entirely and climbed onto the top of Anor Londo's lower wall. The humans lost sight of her for a time as she ran from one side of the parapet to the other, anchoring threads in the crenelation, before she took a running jump into the open air. As she descended, crows slowly rose from the mass to attack her, but she dodged their attacks by jetting to one side or the other and hacking through them, the Furysword cutting a burning line through the sky. As she reached the end of her line, she arced downward, falling straight into the heart of the murder. Her body was buffeted by crows shooting past, but as they tore into her body with wing and beak, her wounds themselves fought back, lava spurting out to send the offending birds hurtling toward the ground.

Quelaag raised her Furysword high, its corona growing larger and brighter, and the maddening signs inside the flame becoming clearer. The spider roared and yanked hard on one of the lines suspending her, causing her to spin as she swung her sword. The living blade spat lava as it cut, spraying through one crow to cover the next and the next. The lava leapt from one bird to the next, branching through the air and piercing through the solid mass of feather and bone like the roots of a tree burrowing through stone. As the Chaos Witch spun gracefully through the vortex, a glowing sphere of molten stone grew around her until the storm of birds had become a single planetoid rotating about her.

At last, she swung through the bottom and latched onto the wall once more as the manmade meteoroid began to fall itself. She watched in wicked satisfaction as the mass of rock and dying birds crashed upon the Fortress' towers, shattering them and itself. The cut stone of the Fortress, glassy bits of hardened lava, and the torn remains of countless crows were strewn across the battered roof.

"I'm okay, thanks for asking," Lex complained into the ring.

Though some dust and small stones covered them, especially on Beatrice's stack of hats, the humans emerged from the Fortress unscathed thanks to the narrowness of the hallway next to the bonfire strengthening the ceiling. As they climbed back onto the roof, the scraping of metal on metal and the jingling of chains echoed in the distance. Sen's gibbet shot up on the side of one of the pillars surrounding the Golem arena just as the humans and the Chaos Witch reached it.

"What have you done to my Fortress?!"

The spider hissed.

"Machine god!" Quelaag spat. "I would never have thought that you would throw your lot in with that monster. You were one of the tolerable ones."

"It was the Great Lord's final decree that the Prophecy be fulfilled! It was others who let her wrap her black talons about it."

Her glowing eyes burned into the god's thick goggles. After a moment, she spoke again.

"Let's say I believe you. Why should I refrain from killing you, if only to deny her a resource?"

"I'm just here to fix my Fortress! Unless you intend to keep running back and forth through it, you'll never see me again."

He looked around at the rubble.

"I might be here until the Fire dies at this rate."

"You may have helped us, but I won't stand idly by and allow you to kill Lord Sen," Siegmeyer rumbled, still ready to fight after their last encounter.

"Hey Quelaag," Lex said suddenly. "Since you're worried about Velka attacking your sisters, why don't you try to convince Sen to build a Fortress down there too? It would be like Minecraft, except the spiders would be a good thing."

She grimaced, trying to balance her resentment of the gods with the practicality of the idea.

"Machine god," she said at last,"since the accident that claimed my mother and my home, I have hunted Undead. I suspect you perform your duty out of love of your devices as much as any loyalty to the departed Lord of Sunlight. I hardly share their view, but my sisters have great faith in this particular human. This prophet insists that we shall soon reunite with a talented smith. Stone, titanite, a smith.

Ruined Izalith has plenty of resources for you to play with. Won't you believe in this fool prophet as well? That now is the last time this decaying Fortress will be necessary? Surely it's safer for you to disappear from Velka's sight entirely?"

"You had me at smith! It's so annoying working with broken materials!"

"Excellent," Quelaag said, smiling wickedly. "Allow me a moment to finish what I was called here to do."

She returned again to the cliffside. Instead of climbing it, however, she flared up her Furysword. She pressed the blade to the sealed gateway, the white-hot blade melting the bricks to slag. Now, she climbed up the side and all the way around, drawing the sword around the edges of the frame. When it was done, she withdrew the blade and slung the liquid stone off of it and into the chasm below.

The spider kicked with its frontmost legs, and the slab toppled inward, revealing a dark but elaborately-decorated passage leading up through the mountainside. The Chaos Witch returned to the humans with a smug look on her face. Beatrice was pouting, but the others were impressed, even if it was begrudgingly for Siegmeyer.

"If the other side is sealed as well, you may need to find your own way out. I'm sure I will be quite busy soon."

"Better than climbing, at least. Thank you," Oscar said.

"I suppose I must give my gratitude as well," Siegmeyer added, nodding.

"Yeah, you really-"

Quelaag stooped down as close to Lex's eye level as the spider could get.

"No, you are the one to be thanked, even if I did help myself. I can't remember the last time I had a proper meal."

She leaned down and licked his cheek.

"It was delicious."

With that, she turned back to Sen. In a flash, she slashed through the chain suspending his gibbet and snatched the cage out of the air before it fell, tucking it under one arm.

"Farewell humans," she said.

"Good riddance!" Sen added.

Without another word, she scurried down the side of the Fortress and was gone.

"I'm not sure how to feel about this," Lex said, holding his cheek.