Thanks for the comments and the reviews guys. I really appreciate hearing your feedback and what you think of the story so far. If you have any ideas for me, feel free to leave them in the comments. If you leave a comment you might also win some COOKIES. (Only joking) Alright, here's chapter 2. Enjoy.
FIRELINK SHRINE
Kaylen gazed out at the scenery as the giant crow carried him and Oscar over Lordran; the valleys and hills looked so beautiful from the distance. Oscar had stopped screaming some time ago, so they both simply enjoyed the view in silence. Some ruins had appeared in the distance, and the crows dove toward them. They sat the travelers down unceremoniously, before doing an impressive U-Turn and landing on the ruined chapel in the distance.
Kaylen rose and dusted himself off. Oscar stayed on the ground for a few seconds longer before standing up.
"That is the only way to travel, right Oscar?" Kaylen said.
Oscar removed his helmet, showing a surprisingly young face with black hair.
"I am never doing that again. Man was not meant to soar in the sky."
Sitting on a log in front of them was a warrior wearing chainmail armor. He was hunched over and was staring blankly into a bonfire, but when he heard all of the commotion, he looked up at the pair.
"Well, what do we have here? You must be new arrivals. Let me guess. Fate of the Undead, right? Well, you're not the first.
But there's no salvation here. You'd have done better to rot in the Undead Asylum…, but too late now, Heh heh heh. Since you're here… let me help you out.
There are two Bells of Awakening. One's up above, in the Undead Church. The other is far, far below, in the ruins at the base of Blighttown.
Ring them both, and something happens…. Brilliant, right? Not much to go on, but I have a feeling that won't stop you."
With the explanation finished, he began to chuckle dryly. Kaylen walked over to him and gave a slight smile.
"Thanks, man. We would probably be completely lost without your help."
Kaylen motioned to Oscar, and they both attuned to the bonfire. Then he led them down some stairs in the back of the ruins.
"That guy's really tough despite his appearance." Kaylen said.
"Will we have to do battle with him?" Oscar replied.
"Nah, he's not fated to go hollow until after we ring both bells."
"This is strange to me. The prophecy my family spoke of only mentioned one bell. I am not one to question the gods, but why are there two?"
Kaylen simply shrugged.
"The gods love to test the chosen undead. The two bells, Sen's fortress, Anor Londo, it's all nothing but a big test that the chosen undead has to complete before they can start the real mission."
"What is the real mission?"
Kaylen ignored the question as the two walked around a short cliff that separated this level from the one above.
Kaylen motioned toward a hole on the face of a wall. Rusty iron bars blocked off the hole, and inside the dark cave was a woman dressed in filthy robes and a hood over her face.
The woman hung her head in misery, not unlike the crestfallen knight, who hung his head in resignation.
"Have you ever seen a firekeeper, Oscar? They're usually buried and unseen, but this one was revealed by accident. Even I don't know how it happened. The only real thing I can tell you is that her name is Anastacia of Astora."
Oscar looked at the woman in pity, before bowing in respect.
"Thank for your selfless act of keeping the bonfire lit."
Kaylen's eyes saddened as the woman seemed to cower a little at the statement.
"She can't speak, Oscar. Her tongue has been cut out."
"What?"
"Her tongue was removed so that she could never say any god's name in vain."
"That's horrible."
Kaylen paused for a second and took a deep breath.
"Oscar, listen. I'm just gonna spoil the ending for you and tell you that if we link the fire we can save her, but in hundreds of years, this will all happen again."
Oscar looked at Kaylen, probably thinking that he was making some kind of sick joke. But after a few seconds of silence, Oscar realized he was serious.
"That's madness. Surely, the gods would never allow such a thing." Oscar said.
"Trust me, against the cycle, the gods are even more powerless than we are. In fact, if they tried to change anything in the slightest, they might end up erasing themselves all together."
"So that's it, then? No matter what we do this whole cycle will continue to repeat itself?" Oscar said in disbelief.
Oscar turned around and look at Anastacia as she sat in misery and sadness.
Kaylen chuckled a little.
"Well, that was the case. but now I'm running this show."
Oscar turned around, now at full attention.
"What?" Oscar said.
"I'm going to change the destiny of the chosen undead."
Oscar stared in disbelief at what he was hearing. Even Anastasia looked up in surprise.
"That's... impossible. One man cannot change destiny."
Kaylen laughed again.
"It's a little late for that Oscar."
"What do you mean?"
"On hundreds of worlds and in thousands of different timelines, you die in the asylum. You were never meant to leave after you freed me from my cell, and yet here you are."
Oscar could do nothing but stare in silence, as Kaylen walked over to the firekeeper. She looked at his face in anticipation.
"Anastasia, I promise you that things will change, and by the time I'm done, you'll never have to see the inside of this cage again."
For a moment, Anastasia sat and stared into the pyromancer face with a mixed look of surprise and disbelief. She was not even used to people talking or noticing her existence at all, and now some man she had never even seen before was promising her freedom.
Tears began to stream down her face as she tried to speak, but since her tongue was removed, it only came out as moaning sounds.
"Ann Ooo, ann Ooo." (Thank you, thank you.)
Kaylen then turned back to Oscar.
"Listen Oscar, I'm am about to undertake a dangerous, and nigh impossible task. You don't owe me anything, and I will understand if want to part ways here."
"Surely you jest, prophet. You will need allies for this journey; I'm coming with you."
Kaylen smiled and pointed his fist at Oscar. Not knowing what the gesture meant Oscar just looked at him in confusion.
"What are you doing?" Oscar asked.
"Where I come from this is a symbol of brotherhood and friendship. It's called a fist bump. You're supposed to bump your fist against mine."
With sight hesitation, Oscar bumped his fist against Kaylen's with a little more force than was necessary, and they held the pose for a second.
Kaylen turned and ascended the stairs. Oscar lingered for a moment but soon followed, finding the pyromancer taking something off a corpse that was hanging over the side of a well.
Kaylen nodded at him and pointed up the hill. There were number of hollows standing vacantly, but unlike the ones at the undead asylum, these hollows had scraps of armor and weapons that were mostly intact.
"I need you to go and kill those hollows, and watch out for the one on the cliff, it throws firebombs at you. I've got to go to the graveyard and grab a few things."
"That hardly seems fair."
"You're right; I'm going to be running through the blades of unkillable skeletons that are twice my height, while you have to fight a few mindless corpses. Clearly you're getting the brunt of it."
"Alright, you've made your point." Oscar said as he proceeded to put his helmet back on.
Kaylen gave a quick smile, then turned and ran toward the chapel. Then down the lift shaft to an unexplained group of chests below. Not very fond of blunt weapons, Kaylen decided to just set the morning star in the satchel on his back.
He dropped down on the flooded floor and quickly dashed past the skeletons who were assembling themselves, then proceeded to run past their awakening friends by the cliff. Soon, they were all running behind him with swords drawn.
"ShitShitShitShit"
The mob of skeletons were approaching, and he would have no room to maneuver among the tombstones.
"Bitch" he said as he punched the head of a giant skeleton that was trying to assemble, making it fly into a tombstone.
Kaylen smirked as the zweihander and the winged spear disappeared in his bag. Breathing heavily, he ran back to the bonfire and lit it, resetting the area. Suddenly, he recoiled in shock.
"Aw shit, hope that didn't mess with Oscar."
He sprinted up the hill to find his suspicions confirmed, all the hollows had been revived. Oscar stood at the top of the hill fighting a hollow he had already killed. Kaylen summoned fireballs and proceeded to use one to kill a single hollow.
The next hollow dropped down the stairwell in an idiotic attempt to ambush Oscar, but Kaylen promptly attacked this hollow with the second fireball, and after suffering a severe burn, the hollow lay sprawled on the ground. The corpse of the firebomber fell from above, and when Kaylen looked up, Oscar was looking down at him expectantly.
"What did you do?"
"Well, I used the bonfire."
"And?"
"Well, the bonfire warps time in Lordran. Aside from healing any wounds we may have, it also returns enemies to their original statuses and positions."
"And you decided to do this while I was in the middle of defeated hollows?"
"Well, I could have led an army of angry skeletons here, if that's what you would have preferred."
"Prophets are often hailed as eccentric, but I think that you may just be an idiot."
"No need to be jealous; with a little bit of sweat and hard work, you too can be as stupid as me."
Oscar just sighed, as Kaylen walked up the aqueduct, and together they entered the interior. Kaylen turned left and killed a giant rat, before he and Oscar took the right path to another staircase.
UNDEAD BURG
As they came down the stairs, a hollow moved to attack them, and another was closing the distance.
Acting in unison, both warriors moved to attack. Oscar moved to intercept the closest one, while Kaylen focused one the one that was the furthest. The hollows were swiftly killed as Oscar cut his target down using his sword and Kaylen incinerated his target with a fireball. Ahead was a wooden bridge connecting this rooftop to the next.
The hollow that Kaylen killed had dropped a longsword, which Kaylen quickly picked up.
"'Bout time I got a sword." he said as he examined the weapon.
Widely-used standard straight sword, only
matched in ubiquity by the shortsword.
An accessible sword which inflicts consistent
regular damage and high slash damage, making
it applicable to a variety of situations.
After finishing, he turned to Oscar.
"All right, I'm going to rush the fire-bomb thrower straight ahead. Follow me, and take out the ambusher on the left."
Oscar nodded in agreement, and Kaylen dashed across the bridge and hit the hollow with a spinning blow. Oscar walked across the bridge and deflected the handaxe of a hollow, then stabbed it straight through its ribcage.
Kaylen headed up to the second story of the building to the right and grabbed something off a dead corpse before proceeding through a fog wall.
He dispersed the fog and put one foot on the bridge that connected this building to the next one. Oscar walked behind him just in time to see a massive dragon briefly land before them, shaking the buildings all around them with its violent arrival. Oscar fell to the ground in fear and instinctively raised his shield to protect himself.
Its massive talons were only a few inches from his face, yet Kaylen appeared to remain remarkably calm, bored even. Just as quickly as it had come, the dragon used its large wings to push itself again and rose above the burg.
Kaylen screamed at the dragon as it flew away.
"YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE, ASSHOLE!"
"A dr-dragon. That was a dragon."
"Please, that things just a drake. It couldn't hold a candle to a real dragon. It's fated to scare the chosen undead at this very spot. But we don't come to blows with it until later." Kaylen paused to think about his playthrough. "Or we could just ignore him altogether."
"Can you please give me clearer warning next time we must face such a beast?"
Kaylen gave a slight shrug.
"Yeah, sure."
They both walked to the next rooftop. Two hollows started to approach them and, with a terribly loud clattering, a third had broken through a wooden barrier behind which it was hiding.
"There's a crossbowman up top. Watch your back while you're fighting."
Oscar nodded in understanding, and they ran toward the hollows. Kaylen bashed one with his shield, and when the hollow was down, Kaylen stabbed it straight through the chest. After killing his target, Kaylen turned quickly and blocked an arrow that the crossbowman had shot at him. Kaylen did not notice the other hollow coming behind him until it was too late.
He tried to turn quickly and raise his shield, but he was too slow. The hollow had its sword raised, ready to kill Kaylen. Only to have Oscar's sword stab it through the back. After killing the hollow, they both turned and raised their shields toward the crossbow wielding one.
"You killed one hollow and were quick enough to come save me? Impressive."
Kaylen could not see it through the helmet, but Oscar was smiling smugly.
"For a prophet, you are quite lacking in awareness."
"Heh, maybe I should have stuck to throwing fireballs."
For the first time, Oscar laughed a little.
"Yes, maybe so."
"Alright, let's kill this last hollow."
Kaylen said as he led Oscar up a flight of stairs, with his shield raised high. He blocked a very cheap iron bolt and charged at the hollow. In response, the hollow dropped its crossbow and drew a longsword. As it hit on Kaylen's waiting shield, Kaylen knocked it aside and stabbed the hollow through the ribcage, effectively parrying for the first time.
As Kaylen pulled his sword from the hollow's body, he spoke.
"Alright, there's a bonfire in that building."
Kaylen pointed his bloody sword to a tower with a broken wall and a bonfire in the middle of the open room. They walked toward the bonfire and attuned to it, but they did not activate its restorative properties, as doing so would revive the fallen hollows.
"Well, that was fun." Oscar said.
"We should go and see the merchant. He's not far from here."
"A merchant? I was worried the whole town went hollow. I could never imagine everyone went hollow all at once."
"Oh, it much worse than you know. The merchant is the only one left with his wits about him, but he's borderline insane. Dude, talks to his sword."
"Why?"
"It's probably the only thing he has left to care about, everyone else here is either dead or hollow."
Oscar sighed.
"So, what is our mission here, prophet?"
"The lift to the Undead parish is jammed. We need to cross the burg onto the far side and make our way to the belfry. There is a powerful warrior there that I want to recruit."
"Understood." Oscar said. "Let us continue, then."
They both then began to walk, ready for the journey ahead. Who is the powerful warrior that Kaylen speaks of? What new threats await the two?
Only time will tell if the two will survive or go hollow.
Chapter 3 will be coming soon, guys. Bring on the review and comments.
*Special thanks to Antoine for beta-reading