Strangely, the doorway at the bottom was only human-sized. Here, the ooze coating the walls was darker than before, less a purple and more outright black. On either side of the narrow hallway were dark, cramped cells, but the bars of the doors had been wrenched open, the steel snapped like threads. The next room was small and mercifully had a bonfire in it, but chains hung eerily from the ceiling.
"What is all this?" Oscar said quietly.
Solaire just gripped his sword tighter, but Lex shook his head.
"Not one-hundred percent sure. I've heard the general ideas about it, but what exactly happened here is purely a matter of speculation. They exhumed a primeval human and drove it mad is fact. From the evidence, though, it looks an awful lot like they tortured the original Dark Lord, doesn't it?"
"Dark Lord?" Solaire murmured uncomfortably.
"Oh, right," Lex said absently. "I only told you, Oscar. It doesn't really have a whole lot of basis in fact, but there's a notion that the aspects of disparity were divided amongst the Lords. Setting aside the rest of them, if Gwyn is Lord of Light, then there must be a Lord of Darkness. Not that Dark is evil any more than Gwyndolin's con game was good. All this horrifying crap is probably just blind rage."
"Makes sense, yeah," Laurentius hummed, scratching his stubble. "The Witch of Izalith and the Gravelord are opposites. Mistress Quelana called what the Witch became a 'twisted bed of life.' The Gravelord's tomb would be a bed of death, wouldn't it?"
Lex gave a brisk nod and continued, "Four seems to be the magic number here, with Four Lords, Four Kings, Four Knights, et cetera. The four aspects of Dark in this time are nostalgia, joy, obsession, and hope. In a future much further than our own time, they'll be want, wrath, solitude, and fear instead. Well, Fear's a pretty nice person, actually, but it definitely seems like this is a doom of our own making."
Solaire gazed into the fire and nodded solemnly.
"We should at least free this 'primeval human' from his pain."
Opposite the entrance was a hole in the wall, bricks strewn about from something breaking through the other side. In the cavern beyond, the trail of ichor no longer covered everything but rather formed a discrete trail leading up from a gouge in the floor.
"Mind your footing," Lex said quickly as he led them down a narrow path along the cavern wall.
CHASM OF THE ABYSS
The cleric quickly skewered a crystal lizard and dropped its corpse in his bag. As the path widened, a faint yellow glow appeared to the right. He approached the prism stone despite the steepening slope and then slid down over a ledge to drop down on a waiting mutant. From there, the path continued downward, and there was instead a white glow from the depths below. Countless humanity sprites floated aimlessly in the darkness, though there was something strange about their size.
"This… is… what you promised the demons?" Oscar said slowly.
"Well, you have to disperse them and see if they leave a more manageable sprite behind, but yeah. This is the unleashed humanity of the people of Oolacile. Pretty to look at, honestly."
At last, the path left the cave wall and headed downward. As they descended, a high-pitched whine buzzed in the backs of their skulls, somewhere between singing and screaming. Near the bottom, Lex quickly veered to the left before the sprites chased after them. In a flash of dull light, the floor fell out from under them. They landed gently in a bed of gray fog, and the cleric quickly dashed into the narrow passage around the corner.
There was a meow, and a fat, gray cat faded away before he could reach it. As he dashed down the corridor, it appeared again in the distance near a demigod-sized humanity sprite. He hacked away at the soul dispersing it with two quick swings, but when he turned around, the cat had gone again. The others caught up as quickly as they could.
"What are we chasing, Lex?" Oscar said before the prophet could run off again.
"Cheshire cat," he grumbled. "We're fated not to catch her, but that's not the point anyway. Come on, we've got a wolf to save."
He paused.
"Does this make Artorias a ranger?"
The path widened now, and Lex cut through another humanity near a ramp leading back. Still, he continued straight ahead, speeding up as he saw the cat again. Two more humanity sprites floated nearby, so Oscar and Solaire tried their luck at dispersing them, getting the hang of it quickly. As the cat disappeared yet again, the cleric kicked at the cave wall behind her, causing it to vanish as well. Beyond the hidden wall was a narrow crevice that quickly grew into a rather large interior cave.
A great deal of humanity sprites milled about, and at the far end was a dim ring of golden light. The group slowed as they approached. Though it was difficult to see through the haze of the sprites, there was a man-sized wolf in the center of the light.
"Great Grey Wolf Sif, companion of Abysswalker Artorias," Lex said, grinning and crossing his arms. "Well, she's not so great yet, but give her a few hundred years."
An extra set of feet began to echo from behind. A deep, throaty chuckle reverberated through the cavern over the ambient noise of the humanity.
"So this is what that infernal feline was hiding."
"I swear to god, Chester, if shoot me, my wife will eat you."
The man in the tophat and mask extended either hand to show he was unarmed, though his massive crossbow hung across his back.
"Oh, no. You haven't anything to worry about from Marvelous Chester. Weren't my prism stones helpful on the way down?"
"Huh. I was wondering where those came from. Didn't make much sense when the whole kingdom can light their own way."
"Yes, well… I did some preemptive exploration and have located the beast's lair. You're here for the princess, are you not? I could guide you… for a price."
"Couldn't we just follow the prism stones?"
"That-! No! I mean, I didn't leave them along the whole path."
"Yes you did."
"I did nothing of the sort!"
"Wanna bet-?"
"Lex! The wolf!" Oscar barked.
Solaire had already begun to clear away the wandering sprites. Laurentius was trying to scare them away with his light spell without much luck.
"Right," Lex said, rubbing the back of his neck. "What do you want, Chester? Just trying to collect on the windfall of souls from killing Manus?"
"Well, there's that of course. You see, I couldn't help but notice you making friendly with those legendary Knights. Now, you seem to know me from somewhere. That's fine, but… surely, you wouldn't leave me to rot away here in this dead kingdom? All I want is for you to ask them a favor on my behalf.
Since going home seems to be out of the question, I want their protection. An escort, to Anor Londo, I suppose. I'm sure I can make my own way from there."
"I'm guessing you don't have the Lordvessel in your own timeline?"
"The what, now?"
"Bingo. I don't know if we come from the same time, but I can take you anywhere in Lordran during what I consider the present. Not that there's much of Lordran left."
"Interesting… Yes, that'll do."
The last humanity phantom dispersed, and the wolf rose from its guarded position, knocking over something behind it. It gripped a smaller, untainted copy of Artorias' sword in its teeth and stepped out of the fading circle of light. Solaire pet its head affectionately.
"What's next, Lex?" the knight said, cheering up a bit.
"Next, we head straight for the big cheese. Laurentius, I don't know what Quelaag told you. If you're not up for a fight, there's an elevator near here that'll take you back to the coliseum."
The pyromancer took a deep breath and shook his head.
"No. If I can assist you with this in any way, I won't hesitate."
"Heh. How brave of you," Chester chuckled.
Lex aggressively shrugged at the newcomer and turned back to Laurentius.
"Did Quelana ascend your pyromancy flame? I'm guessing she kept you away from the Chaos stuff since you're not covered in spikes like Kirk and myself."
"She didn't call it that, but she did share a portion of her own flame with me, yeah. And you're right. Mistress Quelana is having a hard time getting used to, well, everything."
Lex rolled his shoulders and sighed as he rapped his knuckles against the blade of his claymore.
"Well, at least we have that going for us. Between myself and the Astorans, our equipment is garbage. I did not think this through. Should have cleared Seath and Nito first so Oscar and I could at least have maxed our swords. Bluuuh."
"Well, aren't we the ambitious one," Chester said flatly.
"Nah. The ambitious thing was asking Quelaag to date me. Seath actually has a secondary immortality that he wants to try out, so he'll actually break his own immortality crystal for you if you can make it look like he did it on accident. And I think Nito just wants to die. Or maybe he's just horribly messed up after the whole Pinwheel business. They're both scrubs in any case."
"What did you just call the Gravelord?" Oscar blurted in disbelief.
"Look, I'm just saying that the skeletons in his room are more dangerous than he is. Pinwheel is a complete joke, and he still made off with a chunk of Papa Nito's power."
Oscar sighed.
"Let's… just… go."
Lex led the group back out of the interior cave and to the ramp they'd passed earlier, marked by the faint orange glow of one of Chester's prism stones. They followed the ledge down until the path split at another stone, with a narrow slope leading upward and a gentle ramp downward. The cleric headed upward without hesitation, again following the cavern wall. At the end of the path was a corpse with a normal humanity sprite on it, but he ducked to the right, slamming a mutant sorcerer against the wall. He took a second swing, breaking its back, and it crumpled.
That done, he put the humanity in his bag and dropped down the short ledge at the end. The mass of humanity phantoms hovered absently in the distance once more, but directly in front of him was a fallen pillar illuminated by three prism stones. The worn patterns on the stone were primitive and unlike the elaborate designs of modern Oolacile. It led into the deepest depths of the darkness, but descending alone was a nerve-wracking experience, as the individual blocks of the pillar were misaligned and crooked. At the end, Lex swung down and ducked under it to retrieve a pair of humanity sprites, which he stuffed in his bag with all the others.
The group stood at the mouth to another interior cave, though this one was much larger than the last. They continued down until a small tunnel branched off, where Lex told the others to wait. The cleric descended a narrow spiral path, hacking through a small humanity phantom to pass through to a ledge with a larger phantom on it. He quickly dispatched this one as well before turning to collect a head-sized block of bleached titanite. Stuffing it in his bag, he returned to the group, and they continued down to the next prism stone, where the left wall of the passage gave away.
"Well, here it is," Chester said, gesturing as if he'd been the one leading.
There were some humanity phantoms floating about the path ahead and the platform below and a distinctly dull and murky fog wall blocking the passage beyond. The three swordsmen cleared the ramp quickly, and the group continued as it curved back upon itself before reaching the cave floor. Lex pointed, and they turned around to clear out the rest of the humanity. At the back of the room was a soul clump, and after putting it away, he turned back to stare at the fog.
"You know what? Let's cheese the big cheese. Chester, get your crossbow and stand right over there," he said, gesturing to a small protrusion before the floor gave way.
"Hm?" he mumbled, doing as told.
The scoundrel crouched and braced the massive crossbow against his shoulder. He looked down through the scope and began chuckling.
"Oh, this is magnificently ironic. Killing a beast that lurks in the Dark by doing so oneself."
"What's this, Lex?" Solaire scolded. "Such cowardice disrespects this poor fellow. If he has already suffered at the hands of the people here, the least we could do is give him an honorable death. It's hardly surprising that one of his strongest emotions becomes fear if he's slain by a sniper's bolt without warning!"
"Yes, well, it's fine to feel that way," Chester grumbled, "but I have a vested interest in staying alive, myself. The primeval human had his chance."
Without waiting for further instruction, he shot through the inky darkness. In the distance, the bolt struck true between glowing red eyes, and a horrible roar echoed up from below. Suddenly, a vortex of darkness rose up from the pit. Oscar raised the pendant, but it did nothing to stop Manus' disembodied hand from swiping through the cavern, bowling them over.
"He's cheating!" Lex shouted as he stumbled to his feet. "Through the fog!"