THE DUKE'S ARCHIVES
The bonfire burbled and lashed out suddenly, causing Arnalt to fall backward out of his chair.
"'anser! The fire's doin' some weird shit!"
It flared up and cracked the marble floor as vegetation began to grow out from the flame. As Hanser, Logan, and unexpectedly Griggs quickly rushed in from the innermost library, Lex emerged from the fire with a strange look in his eye.
"Yo! How's the studying going? Anyone go insane from the creepy whispering voices yet?"
"No, actually," Hanser huffed, "though I wish you had mentioned them beforehand. I thought I was having flashbacks. Fortunately, young Griggs knew a sorcery able to silence them. Another interesting avenue to pursue when we have the time."
"Mm. The Chosen Undead, I presume," Hatless Logan said as he approached. "I've heard much of you and was hoping we would meet. It is so rare to find a kindred spirit amongst the men of the cloth. Imagine my surprise when Griggs told me that a cleric Chosen by the gods was interested in developing new magic without them! I am Logan, though you are no doubt aware. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Lex shook his hand vigorously.
"King Lexaeus of Izalith, Prophet of Slaanesh. Well, I'm sorry about your hat. If it hasn't been destroyed, then a, uh, Dark Wraith but not a Darkwraith has it. Speaking of which, she should have arrived by now."
Griggs made a very strange face and muttered, "King… of Izalith?"
Logan looked back to the others, who shook their heads.
"We haven't seen anyone, much less a 'Dark Wraith,' if that's what you're calling that rude young woman who made off with it. Mm. Now that I think on it, we haven't seen Seath in some time."
"Ooooh boooy," Lex sighed. "Do you know where he went?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's slipped my mind."
"'e wen' deeper int' th' garden," Arnalt said, waving. "'ard t' miss when it's th' most anyone's moved in hours."
"Hahhh. The Crystal Cave. And here I thought I could avoid it."
He sighed and looked over the balcony while digging through his pack. He withdrew the rope and tied the end to the railing before throwing the rest over the side.
"Well, I'm off to make sure no one dies before the final battle and to raid Seath's titanite stores. I guess it's cool if you guys stay here researching stuff, but we're going to fight Velka for the fate of the world or whatever soon. Just a head's up. Don't actually know when she's going to show up."
"We wouldn't miss it," Hanser said grimly.
"If nothing else, it would be a rare opportunity to see the ancient magics in the Witch-Goddess' possession," Logan added, nodding. "Griggs and I will attend as well."
"Ha! No kill like overkill! I think at this rate, friendly fire is going to be more dangerous than Velka. We'll send someone to get you when she shows. Though honestly, we might just parade through the Kiln to attract her attention."
"The Kiln? The Kiln of the First Flame?" Logan said excitedly. "I'd eat my hat for the chance to study it!"
"Well, it's a good thing your hat is gone, isn't it?"
Lex waved as he clambered over the ledge and began to rappel down the wall. Midway to the bottom, a thought occurred to him.
"You know, I could probably just have Quesadilla take me down to the boss room, but I'm not sure if I want to have her and Beatrice and Seath in the same place."
He hopped down the last bit and made his way down the slope of the wooded garden. On the far side, there was as massive crater in the ground from which enormous crystals rose like a blight on the land. They didn't break the surface so much as become the surface, turning even the nearest trees into glittering spindels. Crystal golems turned as they heard his footsteps, and he quickly broke into a sprint. As they lumbered ahead to intercept him, he dashed past them and onto a fallen crystal far larger than the sarcophagi used as bridges in Nito's domain.
CRYSTAL CAVE
The cleric slid to the bottom, where it intercepted a rough geode. There, he rose and quickly made his way down the uneven surface as another golem hurried up toward him. It swung its arms back and made a flying leap for him, but he ducked under it and turned again onto the next crystal bridge. Another geode, another turn onto a crystal bridge, another geode, another turn onto a crystal bridge. Here, the path differed – a second crystal jutted from the end of the first at a right angle, but he charged straight ahead without hesitation.
Over the edge he went, only he didn't fall. The unseen crystal beneath his feet ran straight ahead through a crevice and to a visible one on the other side. He grabbed a humanity sprite from the corpse there and then hopped back onto the main path, quickly descending down the glimmering cave wall and following the ledge to a dead end. Here, he turned and charged off the ledge, rising through the open air on another arbitrarily invisible path. When he reached the visible bridge on the other side, one of the larger golden golems ran toward him, but he kept moving.
Fire.
He made a shooting motion with his left hand and blasted the mobile road block into some of the smaller crystal spindels rising from the next platform, shattering them before the thing tumbled over the edge to shatter on the cave floor. He simply continued, turning and crossing the platform until it ended. Paying the nearby moonlight butterfly no heed as he passed under its fluttering wing, he simply hopped down and turned in place on the invisible platform. He raised his pyromancy flame and quickly hurled a Great Chaos Fireball into the passage behind him. Three crystal lizards sizzled to a crisp, and he quickly stuffed their corpses into his bag before turning back to the invisible path.
"This DM is a serial PC killer!" he screamed as he ran straight ahead, crossing half the cavern in a single sprint.
At last, the prophet skidded to a stop on a visible bit of crystal jutting out off of a ledge. He turned and headed into a crevasse beyond. The cave on the other side sloped downward into a fog wall, but between where he stood and there were a number of giant oysters with legs.
"Time for a bit of early farming, I guess," he said as he slipped on the gold serpent ring.
One of the creatures had noticed him and was walking forward on its long, spindly legs with all the grace of a conga line. As it approached, he awakened his armor and took his sword in both hands. With a thunderous crash, he hammered the heavy blade into its shell, cracking it and sending the thing reeling. He stomped forward and followed with a second blow, shattering the bone with a jingling uproar. This of course attracted all the other monster oysters.
"I hate seafood."
He switched to his pyromancy flame and ran Chaos down the length of his blade. More than a simple aura now, the embers fed into the steel and surged beneath the hamon like a fish beneath the waves. Sparks jumped out of the back and flipped through the rings before splashing back into the flat. As the armor dug into his ever-regenerating flesh and feasted on the power of the Life Lord, the lion on his shoulder roared and rattled the interlocking plates. The King of Izalith grinned madly and stood his ground.
Two pairs approached him from the front, and a hidden one snuck up from behind. The first two lunged forward, scraping the stone with the bottoms of their shells as they tried to throw him with the spikes around the rims of their lids. Lex quickly backstepped, and as they flipped some bits of stone into the air, he slid forward, sweeping his sword with him. Though the attack lacked the explosive power of the first, the blade cut a glowing line through the armor, cutting the lip off of both shells. As the monster recoiled in agony, he stepped forward again and hacked through one then the other.
The others continued onward fearlessly, stepping over the bodies of their fellows like any other obstacle. The nearest one hazarded a kick, but Lex simply hacked off its feet. It recoiled the injured legs but now had some trouble balancing its precariously large body. As the other one surged forward blindly, the cleric dodged forward and knocked over the injured one before whirling around to cut his attacker through the hinge. He flipped his sword over and stabbed it through the top of the fallen one before turning to face the last.
It continued on its merry way as if the rest of its kind hadn't been reduced to melted chunks. Lex simply wheeled forward and slashed through it with an overhead strike before it could react. He sighed and bent down to examine the contents of the oyster's mouth. Countless human skulls were stuck together under a thin layer of nacre.
"I wonder if Quelaag would like a pearl necklace or if she just doesn't care about jewelry."
At last, he found what he was looking for – a large chip of the shimmering material that wasn't coating anything. He broke it off and stuffed it in his bag before checking the other oysters. Once he'd collected all the twinkling titanite and purging stones, which were thumb-sized leaden bricks of nacreous human bone, he approached the fog.
"So this means that either Seath is home or Beatrice killed him and went crazy and became the new boss, same as the old boss."
The Lord pushed against the fog, and it caught alight, burning away instead of simply fading. In the cave beyond waited the ancient white dragon. He was laughing his horrible cicada laugh. At his (lack of) eye level hovered a moonlight butterfly. Despite being able to fly herself, Beatrice was seated on its back.
Lex's head tilted to one side as he tried to puzzle out exactly what was going on. Before he could say anything, though, the blind dragon turned toward him.
"An iiiiiiinteresting soul! Greetings to you, Choooooooosen Undead and Lord of Izalith!"
"Uh, yeah. I guess. Hi. I wasn't exactly expecting you two to be getting along if you were all the way down here, you know, with the Primordial Crystal."
"Yessss. Young Beatrice did try to steal my Cryyyyyyystal. From the moment I sensed her presence, she was making a bbbbeeline for it."
"You can't expect me to not go after such a huge blob of power!" the witch said, shrugging. "I could sense the thing from miles away!"
"I thought you wanted to lose the Crystal," Lex said plainly. "Usually, you just kind of blind fire with your death laser until you destroy it yourself."
The dragon craned its neck down to the human's level. Its head alone was the size of his entire body. He immediately regretted his use of the word "blind," but a crooked smile formed on Seath's skinless lips.
"Uuuusually?"
"Uh oh."
"No, do tell, prrrrrrophet. You seemed so nonpllllllussed about traveling through time itself – the greatest power that could ever be. Ttttell me: your powers of prophecy do not derive from those ppppetty gods, do they? If they had such power, they would keeeeeeep it to themselves."
"Time travel?" Beatrice echoed. "You mean like what what's-her-face was doing?"
"Another?"
"Well, that's not exactly right," Lex said quickly. "Someone was able to establish a link over the ages to directly send her summon sign to this era. Though why freeing her sent her back to her own era in the first place is super hazy. I mean, Beatrice didn't go back."
"Freeing...? That's whhhere that princess went! I was ffffinally about to examine her, and lo and behold, she's gone!"
The dragon made a noise that vaguely sounded like a sigh.
"Thhhhat is a matter for another time. What of your travels, 'prophet'?"
"Yeah, I'll go ahead and give it to you straight before you go and cause a Time of Cascading Years or some other catastrophe. I'm actually not from the future. I'm from an alternate reality where the prophecy of the Chosen Undead is form of interactive fiction. You inexplicably survive your death here and go on to continue being a pain in the ass in the sequel, where you possess a giant, two-headed spider."
"What?"
"Yeah, the sequel doesn't make a whole lot of sense. All the dragons have souls. Even you."
"Wwwwwell," Seath chuckled, "that at leassssst is not no far-fetttched. Though you are no doubt awwware, the cinders of Flame do not truly diiiiie. It is an unnecessssssary risk to rely upon a fragile Cryssssstal for immortality. Until the time ccccomes when I am able to reproduce such, I have created a soooul for myself, that I might recur when the Flllllame rises from the ashes."
"Then why wouldn't you let me have the Crystal, you shit?!" Beatrice huffed.
"Because I had hoped to ffffalsify my death before the Chosen Unddddead. It seems that is futile. You may doooo as you please with it. Nowwww, Chosen Undead and Lord of Izalith, iffff you know that I will not fall here, thhhhhen what is your purpose?"
"I need, like, a lot of twinkling titanite. Ethical concerns about how you make it aside."
The dragon's horrible buzzing laughter filled the chamber yet again.
"For the sssssake of defeating that treacherous Velka, you may take as much as you wwwwwill – in exchange for but a sssssecret."
Seath looked back at Beatrice, who had returned to her monstrous form and was struggling to pry the enormous crystal from its setting without breaking it.
"Iiiiiis your friend seeing anyone right now?"