The trio hopped down onto another narrow stone bridge. The chasm below was dry, and behind them, in the shadow of the cliff, stood a man in a tallcoat and tall hat with a terrible, sneering mask.

"Hm… Oh, let me guess…" he condescended.

He was abruptly cut off as Quelaag crashed down on the bridge.

"What the devil?!"

"As you can see," Lex said smugly, "invading us is not a good idea, Chester. Later!"

They crossed the bridge and approached a coliseum that had been visible from the cliffside. Beyond a truly massive archway was a fog gate.

"Right, so, no real strategy here because the fight is too fast-paced for me to remember anything solid. If he starts screaming, everyone beat the crap out of him, because he's powering up. It can be stopped if you break his concentration, and it's a pain to deal with him if you fail. General idea is that we're just going to beat the crap out of him until we can disarm him or something."

He blinked.

"Wait. Quelaag, before we go inside, climb up to that tower on the right side of the arena and tell Gough to get off his fat ass."

She snorted suppressing a laugh.

"If you insist, prophet."

The witch turned about and skittered up the outer wall.

"What happened to him, Lex?" Oscar asked quietly. "I thought he was protected from the Abyss."

"I honestly don't know. My timeline kind of turns into a scribble when Artorias is involved. In any case, his magic ring only protects against the Abyss itself. He's still just one man, with one life – unlike the rest of us immortal jerks."

Oscar nodded sadly. Solaire was whispering a prayer into his talisman. Lex drew up his own, if only to prepare for the fight. After a while, Quelaag's voice tingled at the back of his mind.

"Lex, the giant is aware of the situation. I think he's pouting, so I left him alone. I'll wait for you to flush out our prey before entering myself. I don't know how the Dark has damaged him, but the element of surprise is a vital weapon."

"Sounds good. I was thinking in two dimensions, but I guess you don't have that limitation."

"I will see you momentarily."

Lex nodded to the others and waved his talisman as he recited the hymn to awaken his armor. As before, it roared and dug into his flesh, draining his life in exchange for granting him inhuman strength. He grimaced before speaking.

"It's go time. Quelaag's going to drop in from the top of the arena. If we're lucky, Hawkeye Gough will provide support as well, but it might be too difficult for him to shoot into melee without hitting us as well. We're a lot smaller than dragons, after all."

With that, he pushed through the fog. In the center of the coliseum was one of Oolacile's mutated townsfolk, arms longer than its body and carried at right angles, and a round head with countless glowing red eyes. Lex held his talisman to his mouth and gripped his sword tighter. The creature looked up and staggered backward. With only that warning, a figure suddenly dropped down from above.

A demigod knight in midnight blue, soaked in a strange inky substance, crushed the deformed man beneath his bulk, a massive tarnished sword splitting its skull in half. Even in that condition, it struggled to escape. The knight tiredly raised his sword slightly and slammed it down again, gore splattering across the front of his cloak. He turned his head slowly and unevenly, as if it were tremendously heavy, but his left arm dragged limply along. He stared at the cleric without a sound and did not acknowledge the two human knights as they entered next.

Darkness began to swirl about him as he stood there. He leaned toward them slightly, imploringly raising his head as an ill wind roared, and space began to distort about him. At last, his strength failed, and only his sword supported his limp body. He roared in pain as the darkness poured out of him like smoke. He howled and tried to lunge at them, but his own arm leashed him to his sword.

His body jerked downward and spun about as he ripped his sword free of the body and tossed it into the air. He crouched down, catching the corpse atop his sword as he hung it over his shoulder. He slashed at the empty air, hurling the bloodied body at the trio. They scattered, and it tumbled to the stone floor in a pile of limbs as the knight howled again. He crouched on all fours and exploded into the air.

As he soared, his body twisted, and he reversed his grip on the sword, hammering the blade through the stone with the full weight of his body just as Lex slipped away. The cleric lashed out with his own greatsword, hitting the demigod twice while he pried the steel free of the floor. Oscar and Solaire closed in, but Lex waved them back as Artorias seamlessly flipped the grip and swung in a half circle. The cleric rolled backward just under the blade and fell in line with the others. Now facing the correct direction, the demigod stomped forward and took a pair of wild swings while the humans retreated.

With them out of his reach, he did a standing frontflip, stomping into their midst and separating Oscar from the others. Without missing a beat, he spun on one foot and hacked upward. Oscar twisted his body and grabbed the back of his own blade as he caught the blow on his Black Knight sword. He went skidding backward as Artorias followed up with an overhead swing. This time, the blow came from the front, so he raised his shield.

As with the Taurus Demon now so long ago, Oscar hammered the impossible blow aside and jabbed his own blade into his opponent's side. Artorias quickly jerked himself free of the perfectly sharp weapon and rolled some distance away. He stumbled drunkenly and clutched his good hand to his face, howling as still more darkness rushed out of him.

"Rush him!" Lex screamed.

The three men ran in, swords clutched in both hands, and tore into the beaten knight. Oscar cut gouges through his sword arm, Solaire thought to limit his mobility by jamming his sword through the demigod's calf, and Lex simply thundered away at his back. At last, he staggered and rolled away again. There was little room to maneuver as the humans closed in, and soon his back was to the wall.

"Move."

Lex glanced over his shoulder.

"Either side, now!"

The knights tumbled aside while he hit the deck. Quelaag tore in from above, swinging on a thread and powered forward by jets of flame. Rather than a lethal stab, she slammed him with the enormous weight of her spider body, shattering the stone wall. She stomped at his feet and melted the floor so that he sank into it. With his legs disabled, she grabbed his shoulder and wrist and pinned his arm, slamming him into the wall a second time.

Artorias shrieked in rage, and his broken body lurched against the restraint. His armor clattered, and Quelaag's grip slipped. There was a noticeable pop as the demigod rolled his dislocated shoulder back into place. He surged forward, smashing his helmet against her exposed forehead and whipped his sword about. The Chaos Witch leapt back quickly as Artorias shattered the slagged stone around his feet with raw strength.

"Which of us is the monster, again?" she chuckled.

The knight charged her, sliding on a trail of ink instead of running. She retreated again, her spider spraying lava to cover her escape. Artorias set his foot down and flipped into the air. Quelaag drew her own sword in a flash and caught the much larger blade in its teeth, hurling the demigod aside.

"Catch me if you can, meathead!"

The spider-woman pulled an imperceptibly-thin thread, and a rope-sized strand dropped from above. She ran to the wall and grabbed hold, leading Artorias in a chase around the arena as she steadily rose higher. At last, he lunged up the wall, but she leapt off and grabbed him by the throat, swinging back across and throwing his body at the humans' feet. Solaire had built up a massive wreath of lightning composed of countless individual spears, and he cast it downward into the Dark-addled body as rain. The corrupted demigod contorted and howled as the divine energy burned his body and the Lex drove collected weapons and throwing daggers through his flesh.

"Oscar! Bust a move!"

The elite knight grumbled but raised the Channeler's trident high and shuffled in a circle. A wave of blue energy rushed out of the staff and filled the group as Solaire twisted Artorias' legs into a lock and Lex ineffectually grappled with his twitching sword arm.

"His helmet!" Quelaag hissed as she paced around her foe.

Oscar tugged at the ragged, bloodied silk and mangled steel until it finally tore free. The legendary Abysswalker was… different from expected. Ornstein was every bit the worn veteran he ought have been. Artorias, by contrast, seemed quite young, with boyish good looks and flawless pale skin, save black tendrils of corruption creeping up from beneath his left eye. He had short silver hair that looked… strangely familiar.

His blank white eyes bulged as he howled again, and the spot on his face spread like a bruise. His whole body convulsed as the Dark stirred up around him. Quelaag quickly shoved Oscar aside and slid to the ground, lifting the demigod into her lap. She bit into his neck carelessly, spraying blackened blood as she did so. The a vortex of darkness whirled around the knight as she drained as much of it out of him as she could. Though the benefits of her last feast had hardly faded, the Dark stoked her internal furnace and caused her to burn brighter and hotter.

Her hair gleamed, and flame licked out from the tips. Her eyes burned like twin suns, and her sword melted the floor even while hanging at her side. Still further, her power grew out of control and overflowed, forming a translucent gown of flame that fluttered over the back of the spider's body. Yet even this was not enough, as the pitch-blackness about Artorias exploded in a flash and sent her hurtling backward. Less a howl and more a shriek now, Artorias screamed as his broken body lurched forward with twice the strength it had before.

"Get out of there! It'll wear off in a minute!" Lex shouted.

"I win this round, Artorias," she gloated, ignoring him.

She swept forward with her sword and repelled the demigod with the blastwave alone. The spider lunged through the air as the demigod skidded to his feet and rolled under the attack. As Quelaag slashed again, Artorias leapt backward and stuck his sword into the wall. Overconfident, the witch charged at him, but he jumped over her and toward the humans. The unexpected attack swept through them and sent them skidding along the broken floor.

Solaire was the least harmed, having followed his own advice and kept his shield up. Still, there was a massive, inky gash across the face of the painted sun. Oscar glanced down unenthusiastically at the tear in his gut and readied to dodge as necessary. Lex's first modified and now mutated armor was not nearly as effective as it had originally been, so he lay face-down in a pool of his own blood. Fortunately, he wasn't panicking yet.

Quelaag roared and hurtled through the air on a blazing thread. She threw a net at the demigod, but he simply rolled away. As she rushed in again, Artorias twisted his body and sprayed liquid darkness from his shattered arm, blinding her. She shrieked with rage, and the floor all around her liquified. Still, this had been enough of a distraction for Oscar to chug half his flask.

A lightning spear struck Artorias' back, staggering him as the rush of power faded. Oscar lunged to take his feet out from under him, but he still had enough energy to roll away. As he took his feet, the sound of a muffled explosion followed, and the demigod reeled backward from the sonic boom. On his last legs, Artorias growled as he turned from one enemy to the other, trying to pick out the weakest. Then, abruptly, he was against the wall with an arrow the size of a sapling sticking through his abdomen.

"Damned tribal gloryhounds!" Quelaag spat.

"Uh?" Lex groaned, exhausted.

"Yes, I know," she grumbled.

She scurried over to the knight before he could recover and dug into his neck again. Her flames roared and grew wilder but thankfully didn't grow anymore as she drained the last of the Dark from his broken body. A sharp blue color returned to his right eye as the haze faded, but the left seemed completely ruined. The glimpse was short-lived, as they fluttered shut when he collapsed from exhaustion. The witch ripped his body off of the greatarrow and laid it on the floor as gently as she could while still quivering from her own power.

"He will certainly need a healer."

She glanced at Lex. He was having trouble responding, as a pair of blades were sticking out of his lungs.

"I thought I heard an insect buzzing about," she growled.

There was someone behind Lex, but whenever Oscar or Solaire tried to approach, he was moved between them, still trying to pull himself off the blades wedged in his needlessly spiky armor.

"That one is mine," Quelaag hummed. "I'm the only one who may run him through."

Lex's eyes opened wide. He hoped that didn't mean what he thought it did.

"Don't misunderstand," she continued, smiling wide. "I have full confidence that he'll return. It's just the principle of it, you know? It would be terribly poor form to kill him to get to you."

Lex threw his arms wide and asked himself what else he should have expected.

"How about a trade? Your man for mine?"

At last, a rather subdued woman's voice sounded from behind Lex: "Artorias is a dear friend!"

"Yes, a dear friend that your other dear friend just shot, while the fourth member of your merry band didn't even bother to leave home. Do you want him or not? At this rate, he'll bleed out while you're repressing that infantile crush you've had since the beginning of time."

Lex wobbled toward Quelaag, then paced past her to Artorias. At last, there was a spurt of blood and sparks, and he fell over to reveal a woman of average human height in elaborate blue robes decorated with bleached bone. Her head was hooded, and a porcelain mask concealed her face, but a short blond braid trailed out the back. In either hand was were long, wavy knives – one gold and full, the other silver and spined like fish bones. Oscar, who had kept the flask to his lips, finally drank.

"My dear Artorias…" the woman whispered as she began to remove the few knives that hadn't fallen out during the battle and tried desperately to dress his wounds.

Lex bobbed his head back and forth, then turned to Quelaag, holding his arms up strangely.

"I'm tired and full of puncture wounds. Carry me."

She narrowed her eyes.

"Say that again."

"What's even the point of having a body that big if I can't ride you into battle?"

She snorted as she suppressed a laugh again.

"What are you after?"

"I don't have any healing spells prepared, and it'd be kind of crap if we put all that effort into saving him, and then he died anyway. There's a bonfire over there, so I could swap spells, and honestly, we haven't really done a whole lot together, so this is kind of a half-assed attempt."

Abruptly, he switched to using the ring.

"Do you want to lose out to those two? We can be the best power couple! They'll sing ballads about us, except the only people dying in them will be our enemies! Power ballads!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but between the enthusiasm and the opportunity to beat Artorias at something else, I'm all for it. Come, let's be disgustingly romantic."

Quelaag scooped Lex up, and they leaned against one another as she carried him toward the bonfire. From a distance, it did certainly look romantic, but they were both chuckling wickedly under their breath. Off to the side, Solaire was praising the sun. Oscar shook his head and sighed.

"Well, thank the gods I'm normal."