Ch 2 - A Walk in the Woods
A/N: Feels a bit weird, because I haven't actually typed anything in 2 months because college. Might take me a bit to get back into the swing of things. I apologize if this is visible in my writing. Also, it's weird to be following the Volumes as I write, but basically disregarding the actual dialogue of the scenes because of the divergence from canon. And with the way I've planned things, I'm pretty sure half of Volume 8 won't happen to begin with. It also feels strange to be watching Volume 4 again to begin with. I'm still heartbroken by Volume 8 (I'm typing this in early April 2021). Neo might be Best Girl, but Penny was my favorite character and OH GYWN, MY FEELS! IT HURTS! IT STILL HURTS!
Ahem… anyways, let's get back into the swing of things. And I'm gonna try to do more from Nora and Ren's perspectives this time around.
Edit 3/11/2024: In the spirit of current memes, "WE MAKING IT TO MISTRAL WITH THIS ONE, BOYS!" (but not actually, that's like 20 chapters from now, lol)
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belongs to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.
(Nora)
"I'm just saying," the ginger bomber spoke up as the group continued their conversation as they trekked through a forest on Anima, "was VAAPPR (AN: Vapor) really the best we could come up with as a new team name?" Nora Valkyrie brushed a strand of orange hair that had gone in front of an eye behind her ear. One of the downsides of letting it grow to reach her shoulders, she supposed. And that wasn't the only part of her appearance she'd changed. Her eyes had shifted color from a more turquoise tone to something approaching aqua, which she personally thought was cool, and she'd framed them with a touch of pink eyeshadow at their far upper corners. Ren didn't notice that yet, but she masked being upset about that really well. Her fingerless gloves were still pink, as was the pleated skirt (albeit with a white layered tulle) with two wide belt loops (which were also pink) that reached halfway down her thighs, and her knee-high socks that poked up from under her white calf-high boots, which also had pink laces, though the low heels, soles, and toes were black. Her white, sleeveless turtleneck was basically the same as the one she wore at Beacon, though the heart cutout on the chest had a diagonal slash through it. Nora personally thought it made her look more rugged, and no one said anything negative about it, and Vyliria even seemed to vaguely approve, so it couldn't be a bad thing, at least. On her left arm was a short, detached white sleeve, and over her shirt was a short sleeved, open, cropped navy blue bomber jacket - Heh, navy blue bomber jacket. Try saying that five times fast, she thought to herself - with a damaged print of her hammer-with-a-lightning-bolt emblem on the back, pink stripes along the sleeves, pink buckled cuffs, and red lining on the collar and inside of the jacket. Her canvas talisman rested on her hip, and under her shirt, held around her neck by a thin chain was a badge of the Warriors of Sunlight. After they'd started their journey, Nora had decided that jolly cooperation was something right up her alley, and the second day out of Vale, she'd asked Vyliria if she could join as well. A bemused unkindled found herself inducting her, Ren, and Penny on the same day, and couldn't quite keep the smirk out of her tone as she did so.
"Well, it might not be a color, but honestly, with our initials, it's a miracle we could come up with a team name for the six of us to begin with," her partner Lie Ren responded calmly. Renny himself (the nickname was interchangeable for her) had a new outfit that bore some similarities to the one he had at Beacon, but it was still decidedly different. His eyes were still magenta, as was the steak on the left side of his hair, but the hair itself had been let down, and allowed to grow to a few inches above his butt. Her pancake-making husbando - not that I'd ever utter that aloud - had a longer, sleeveless tailcoat with black and silver trimming, the main color of which was a slightly darker shade of green than his last outfit. Beneath that was a black, sleeveless turtleneck with red, tasseled ropes over the hips, and his legs bore a pair of white pants that were tighter below the knees, and on his feet were black, calf-high open-toed sandals. Going from his middle fingers to his biceps were gradient pink-to-black detached sleeves that ended in metal armbands. His sorcery staff was tucked into a cloth loop on his back, and his covenant badge also rested under his shirt.
"Are we really bringing this up again, guys?" Jaune asked. "Like, seriously, why not talk about that gigantic geist we just wasted instead?" Nora's fearless team leader had undergone a drastic change of outfit, and the story behind it was somewhat amusing. Originally, most of the group was going to keep the same outfits for the trip to Mistral. But then Vyliria had swapped her attire out for something more red and rustic themed, claiming, "Sometimes you just need a complete outfit change," and Penny decided to follow her example, swapping her outfit to something better suited to long-term travel. After that, Pyrrha decided that getting actual armor so she wouldn't take another arrow to the heel was probably a good idea. They'd had a good laugh when Vyliria had said that at least she didn't take an arrow to the knee, which sobered quickly when they realized she wasn't referencing an Olden Scrolls game, but speaking from the actual experience of taking a greatarrow to the knee. Ouch. At that point, Nora had hopped onto the bandwagon, and Ren had joined her before she could start pestering him to do so as well. Finding himself the odd one out, Jaune jokingly remarked that he may as well go for a full knight getup, only for Vyliria to say that she could actually make that happen.
Case in point, according to the Irithyllian, Jaune was now clad in the titanite-reinforced armor of an elite knight of the long-dead kingdom of Astora, which was apparently famous for its knights and some super-dude in the Warriors of Sunlight named Solaire. Instead of the brown scarf that came with the set (Pyrrha chose to take that for herself), the hood of his black hoodie poked out from beneath his chestplate. His hair had grown a bit messier, but was kept roughly the same length, and the helmet for the set currently rested on the hip opposite of where Crocea Mors rested, his chime of Filianore just behind his shield-sheathe. The right arm was more heavily armored than the left, with a full steel pauldron, steel on the upper arm and the back of the elbow, and a steel gauntlet that went nearly to the elbow, chainmail covering what the metal didn't. The upper half of the left arm, and its elbow, were also protected by steel, but lacked a pauldron, and the lower half was covered by chainmail, the glove and was leather, as was the wrist guard, more chainmail visible on that limb than the other. When Jaune had questioned the difference between them, Vyliria had remarked that the armor was originally meant for humans who didn't have aura-enhanced (or undead-enhanced) strength, so weight and the balance thereof were factors to take into account when making armor. The less armored arm would have a shield to protect it, so the armorers could both afford less protection on the left limb, and needed to lighten it to account for the weight of the shield. The boots and knee-guards were also steel, though the leggings and boots themselves were a thick tan leather, apparently basilisk hide, and therefore far more durable than what would come from a cow. Nora wasn't ashamed to admit she had nightmares the first time she slept when Vyliria had described just what a basilisk was. Petrifying curse-fog spraying giant googly-eyed frog things with fanged mouths and beaks that liked to lurk deep underground, in poisonous areas, swamps, and poisonous swamps were something she could do without, thank you very much. Over his chainmail coat was a basilisk-leather one, dyed a deep blue with gold embroidered edges, Vyliria having used some sorcery to alter the gold-stitched crest of Astora on the chest to the Arc crest at Jaune's request. Around the waist and across his chest were ordinary leather straps.
"I mean, it wasn't anything special," Pyrrha Nikos responded. "Vyliria just blasted its body with soulstream and then I hit the actual geist with a sunlight spear." The redheaded tournament champion from Mistral, who's life had been saved at the last possible second by a half-hollowed Vyliria who couldn't even remember her own name at the time, had also undergone a heavy outfit overhaul. She still had her bronze circlet with emerald earrings, a red sash about her waist, pinned in place by a bronze plate with her emblem, her eyes were still green, her eye-shadow being a lighter shade of the same color, and her dark red hair still sat in a waist-length ponytail, but those were the only things about her getup that hadn't changed. Now, she was clad neck-to-toe in form-fitting steel armor, painted a dark bronze with lighter bronze highlights, styled like what ancient Mistralians used to wear. The armor didn't cover her completely, of course, as some needed to be removed from the joints to allow maneuverability, but thick black leather covered whatever the metal didn't. An armored skirt went from her hips down to just above her knees, her armored boots were no longer heels, and, as mentioned earlier, the brown scarf that was originally part of Jaune's armor was wrapped about his girlfriend's neck. Her shield, Akoúo̱, rested on her back, as did her soul-transposed spear she'd obtained from the Grimm wyvern that had attacked Beacon and Vale, which she had dubbed Phalanx. Her xiphos (which was now only thus) Miló rested on her left hip, and her sunlight talisman, wielded by Solaire himself, was upon her right hip.
"It was an incredibly efficient dispatch of a very dangerous Grimm," Penny Polendina chimed in. Nora personally liked the gynoid, who had a very compatible personality with her own.
"Overpowered spells do tend to make the average encounter trivial," the last member of their group, embers lazily burning across her form in a manner Nora frankly found awesome, Vyliria Avalon, finally joined the conversation. "And before you try asking again, Nora, we're not naming the team AVALPN (A/N: Avalon). I refuse to name us after myself… But enough of that, Look at the bright side: with how much we've been breezing through our encounters with Grimm during the trip, we're a week ahead of schedule."
"Yeah," Nora responded, "but you 'celebrate' our progress with relentless sparring at every available opportunity. Just because you and Penny can't get tired like the rest of us mortals doesn't mean that we can as well."
Vyliria's hooded head tilted downwards for a few seconds, and Penny glanced over to her when she didn't immediately respond. The rest of the group came to a stop as well when they saw the Irithyllian's mood dip. "I… I have the dubious benefit of being able to learn from literally fatal mistakes. But just because I can doesn't mean I should welcome death with open arms, content in the knowledge that I'll get another attempt. Especially since the nearest bonfire is all the way back in Vale. I… I still can't figure out how to call upon my fragment of the Dark Soul at will. I can't just snap my fingers and use it like I did against Cinder. And my fight with Tyrian proved I've gotten rusty. I need to improve my skills, with all of my weapons. That's why I've been so adamant on sparring with you all as we've progressed on this journey. Why any day we don't encounter Grimm, I ask to clash blades to hone my skills. Because I need to improve, so I can keep my promise."
Nora looked to the unkindled, and decided to offer her own two lien. "Vyliria, I appreciate it. We all do. But you don't have to run yourself ragged every day for our sakes. I know you're… well, dead and all that, but you deserve to live a little, just like the rest of us."
Penny stood on her tip-toes and put a hand on Vyliria's shoulder, and she looked over to the gynoid. "I know you don't mind getting hurt, Vyliria. I know you'll come back if you die. But it still hurts to think back to when you did. It hurts us all to see you push yourself so hard. You care about us, but we care about you as well. I care about my best friend."
"I… I…" Jaune cut in before she could finish.
"Come on Vyl, you said it yourself. We're kicking butt, and we're ahead on our trip. Just take a break, and enjoy the journey with the rest of us."
The unkindled cocked her head. "Vyl?"
Pyrrha was the one who replied, managing to look abashed as she did so. "I came up with the nickname just the other day."
Vyliria was pensive for a few moments. "I'm honestly not sure how to feel about it. I've… well, I've never had a nickname before. The few I could call friends in my days in the Age of Fire were far too formal for something like that. I suppose I'll give it the opportunity to see if it grows on me."
"Knowing you, that's likely the best concession we'll get," Ren chimed in.
Vyliria took a breath. If Nora squinted, she could see a smile underneath the veil of her hood. "I'll take a break. At least until we're through the next village."
Nora's stomach growled loudly enough to scare several nearby birds. "Great!" she said before segueing into the most important thing in the universe at the moment: "So that means we can have lunch now, right?"
Vyliria joined her friends in a round of laughter, before using her pyromancy to light a fire so they could get to heating some pancake mix… being cooked by Renny. Vyliria might have forced them all to carry their survival gear on them, but she did store away a year's supply of maple syrup at Nora's (extreme) insistence.
With Ren busy flipping the batter, the group found themselves in a lull in the conversation. One Nora decided to fill. "Hey, Vyliria?" When the unkindled gave an inquisitorial hum in acknowledgement, the ginger bomber continued with, "So you keep mentioning crazy stuff you did in Lothric, but you've never really gone into the specifics. Since we got time to kill, why don't you tell us a story?"
"What about that time you made us drink Siegbrau, Vyl?" Jaune asked. "You mentioned that you'd got the stuff as a gift for helping someone fight a guy named Yhorm. There's gotta be a story behind that!"
"There certainly is," Vyliria remarked. "Yhorm was a giant so massive, that geist we killed earlier would have only come up to his knee. The last Greatwood Giant, and a Lord of Cinder to boot, which meant not only was he even more powerful, but he was on fire as well."
"You fought a flaming giant?" Pyrrha asked.
"In his throne room, full of corpses and gold, both the results of his failed efforts to save his subjects that hated him," the Irithyllian replied.
"That sounds like quite the story," Penny remarked.
"Even I have to admit my curiosity has been piqued," Ren added as he passed the first finished stack of pancakes to Nora.
"Come on, tell us the story!" Nora said. Or well, that's what she would have said had the pancakes in her mouth not made her speech unintelligible.
Vyliria sat down in the shade cast by a tree trunk, and pulled her hood off. She had a wry smile on her face. "Fine, just give me a second to figure out where to begin…"
(Vyliria)
"Irithyll dungeon and the Profaned Capital were not pleasant places to go to. Full of psychotic jailers who could drain your vitality with their mere gaze, giant undead rats, even larger giant undead rats, basilisks," she didn't miss Nora's shudder at the word, "and mimics all over the place."
"Mimics?" Penny asked.
"Right," Vyliria said, raising a hand to signal an apology. "I forgot that none of you are familiar with the nightmares that plagued Lothric. A mimic is… well, picture a treasure chest. Just, a stereotypical wooden chest with a metal chain on the side. Except, when you open it, inside is a giant maw with a massive tongue and razor sharp teeth, and hands spring out from the side, grabbing you and yanking you in so it can eat you. And if you manage to puzzle out that it's a mimic and go to attack it instead of opening it, it sprouts legs, and alternates between trying to grab and eat you, or kicking you harder than a horse. And not just normal kicks, because then they wouldn't be enough of an absolute bitch to kill. No, they're also stupidly acrobatic, capable of leaping like a professional dancer, and able to roundhouse-kick so well it still makes me uneasy to recall. Oh, and did I mention that the whole time they're trying to kill you, they're constantly uttering a demented, haunting giggle?"
There were a few seconds of shocked silence. Penny had her hands over her mouth, and Ren had stopped flipping pancakes. Nora had even managed to forget to continue chewing, staring slack-jawed with her favorite meal stuck in her mouth.
"What the fuck?" Jaune finally asked, horror written across his face.
"How can that exist?" Pyrrha asked.
"Honestly?" the Irithyllian replied, "Beats the shit out of me," she finished with a shrug. "Even the gods had problems with them, and if they knew how mimics came about, they never bothered to tell humanity. Legend states that they were born from the souls of beings with great avarice, forever doomed to punish that of others in order to slake their own greed. Right, so where was I? Ah! I was standing before Yhorm's fogwall-"
"Fogwall?" Penny asked.
"Beings with sufficiently powerful souls could make a fog wall around the area they chose to hole themselves up in. It drew power from some remnant of the Age of Ancients, when the world was shrouded in gray fog. You could pass through the fog to enter, but couldn't leave. So once you entered, you either left as a corpse on the way back to the bonfire, or with your foe's corpse at your feet. Anyways..." She lost herself in her memories as she spoke, idly casting mirage to show what she was describing to those gathered. After all, why just tell when you can show and tell?
She gazed at the fogwall ahead, triple checking that her court sorcerer's staff was strapped to her hip. She wasn't exactly sure how useful mundane weapons would be against a giant of Yhorm's caliber, so she held off on willing her sellswords to hand for the moment. If anything, this first crack at her second Lord of Cinder would be the equivalent of testing the waters. She absolutely expected to die, and as much as she didn't like it, she intended to just spend this attempt on getting a feel for how her adversary fought.
At least, that was the plan until she heard armored footsteps coming up behind her. The gargoyles in the Profaned Capital had stone for feet, and the things that looked similar to the jailers had ordinary footwear. She whipped around, terrified that she'd missed the droning chime that signified the entrance of an invader, only for her fears to be allayed by the least expected source.
"Siegward?" she said incredulously. The jovial knight of Catarina had forgone his usual zweihander, and in its place was a seemingly broken (on the blade) stone greatsword of strange make, the blade going for a couple feet before it ended in a jagged shear. His bulbous gray-white armor, resembling an onion in structure (thus earning the kingdom's best warriors the nickname "onion knights") covered the man as always, yet something seemed… different. As she kept bumping into the man during her journey to this fogwall, his normally boisterous (and very scatterbrained) demeanor had become much more subdued, and if she didn't know he was the same man, his posture now may have caused her to assume he was someone else entirely.
"Ah! Vyliria… I didn't expect to see you here. I thought I was going to have to do this alone…" the onion knight said, even his tone betraying his somber mood.
And then it clicked in her head. "Your… promise. Your duty. Thoust were a comrade to Yhorm before he became a Lord, I'd assume?"
Siegward gave a sad nod, before replying, "You can go ahead. I'd like just a moment to… collect myself before I see him again."
Nora raised a hand. "They knew each other?"
"Can I finish the story, and then answer questions?"
"Sorry…"
Vyliria sighed, but continued.
She wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she merely gave a nod of her own, and took a breath, walking to the fogwall. The unkindled gazed into the swirling eddies for a few seconds, before pressing a hand to the arcane barrier. Her hand sunk through, and the fog audibly rippled as her body followed. She stepped forth into a massive throne room, pillars rising over a hundred feet to support the stone ceiling overhead. A dirtied rectangular pool sat in the center of the room, stretching into the distance, and choked with rusted golden trinkets and piles of charred corpses. Many more burnt bodies were piled on the sides and corners of the room. And on the far side, sat a massive throne, atop which was Yhorm. She swallowed at the sheer size of the giant, one hand clutching the handle of a machete with a stone blade that was several dozen times her size, but was slightly longer than a longsword in the Lord's hands. His charred armor covered his form, a crown resembling tongues of flame rested atop his hooded head, and what skin was visible was hideously cracked and burnt, Linking the First Flame having taken its toll, and even now fire coursed along his limbs in a macabre parody of veins (and for all she knew, it was entirely possible that fire was what coursed through the Lord's veins). A bowed head slowly tilted up, and from within the hood two baleful red eyes, each the size of her head, gazed upon her, even as she took increasingly reluctant steps further into the room, her feet splashing in the ankle deep pool.
"This is not going to be a pleasant affair," she said aloud to herself.
More footsteps splashed into the water, and she stopped, turning her head to the left to see Siegward walking beside her, coming to a standstill next to her, his pierce shield in his left hand, and that strange sword in the right, resting on his shoulder. He removed the weapon from said shoulder, raising it and leveling its point towards the Lord in a salute.
"Yhorm, old friend." The world seemed to pause for the span of a terrifying pair of heartbeats. "I, Siegward, of the knights of Catarina, have come to uphold my promise." Yhorm let the machete's end fall to the floor with a thunderous boom, using it as an anchor as he rose to his feet. Vyliria cursed in her head as she watched him casually reverse his grip back to normal on the massive weapon, holding a small house's weight in stone like it was nothing. "Let the Sun shine upon this Lord of Cinder!" the onion knight cried out in response.
With a series of booming footsteps, Yhorm began to merely walk across the room, each step covering dozens of feet. Siegward raised his blade, charging to meet him, uttering a warcry at the top of his lungs.
"HIIIIYAAAAAAA!"
"Really?"
Vyliria shrugged at Jaune's question. "To this day, I still don't really know why he thought it was a good idea to begin with."
Yhorm met him halfway across the room, backhanding Vyliria's fellow warrior and sending him flying like an onion-shaped brick, though he maintained his grip on his weapon. A particularly dense mass of the dead at least cushioned the impact. And then the Lord was upon her. The massive machete raised above and behind Yhorm as he crouched, swinging down towards her from her left. She barely had the time to scream a startled "Oh, fuck!" before she bodily threw herself out of the way as it crashed against the ground, sending a spray of rusted precious metals, water, and stone everywhere. Vyliria scarcely came out of her roll before the machete was coming back around from the other direction, and she threw herself into avoiding the massive strike yet again. Having managed to avoid two killing blows, Yhorm raised his weapon overhead and brought it directly down on her. She hastily called forth her black knight shield, panickedly raising it overhead with her right arm, just in time for the stone blade to impact. With a thunderous clang, the shield held, but the raw kinetic energy of the impact bled through, and combined with the momentum, Vyliria was crushed under her own protection, her arm mangled into so much meat, only held together by her cracked armor, most of her internal organs pulped, and her ribcage reduced to so much skeletal shrapnel. Yet even so, she-
"Penny? Are you okay?" The gynoid appeared horrified, looking down, her arms wrapped about her knees, which were pulled to her chest, and Vyliria paused out of concern.
Penny shivered, refusing to look at the pyromancy paused on Vyliria gazing at her own mangled body. "I just… I don't like thinking of you being hurt like that." A round of agreeing nods from her companions were made.
"Most of my tales involve being hurt like that, and usually worse, especially dying rather painfully. I can stop if you don't want me to contin-"
"No," Penny said, raising her head and meeting her gaze, green eyes meeting a green and silver pair. "I just… I want to hear it, but I don't like hearing about you being hurt and dying."
"Right. I apologize in advance then." The small wave of guilt as she continued stubbornly refused to die down.
Her left arm still functioned, and she fought through her crushed body and the pain, grasping onto her staff and firing a soul spear directly into the giant's face. Yhorm stumbled back a few steps as the sorcery struck an eye, and Vyliria used the opportunity to drop her catalyst and take a deep draught of estus. Her body reknit from its broken state, and she dismissed her shield, frantically scooping up her staff as she scrambled away as her foe recovered and went to bear down on her again.
Yet her ears suddenly picked up the sound of howling wind, which reached a crescendo as what she could only describe as a vertical slice of compressed wind raced across the room, slamming into Yhorm's back at full force, the giant bellowing in pain as he fell to a knee, bracing himself from completely falling with his machete. She gazed in the direction of the attack, to see Siegward holding that strange sword in both hands over one shoulder, winds already gathering to the broken blade once more.
"Only a Storm can fell a Greatwood!" Siegward shouted, as much to her as to their foe. Yhorm rose to his feet again, disregarding the Irithyllian as he charged the Catarinian down. Yet Seigward finished charging the strange magics of his weapon before the giant reached him, raising it high overhead and bringing it down once more, a massive slice of condensed gale-force winds billowing forth and striking the giant face-first. Yhorm fell to his knees again, but this time, when he slammed his blade upon the ground, it was set alight, the flames on his skin suddenly burning with renewed ferocity. He rose much faster than either she or Siegward anticipated, closing the final steps to the onion knight and giving a mighty stomp, flames splashing out from the impact, and knocking her ally from his feet. He recovered quick enough, dodging the follow up strike from Yhorm's machete, but the pillar next to him wasn't as fortunate. Several dozen tons of crumbling masonry rained down, Seigward hastily running out of the impact zone while Yhorm literally shrugged off blocks of stone larger than his head striking him. Seigward seemed to lack the time it took to charge the blade's magic while Yhorm was attacking him, so Vyliria hastily devised a plan to refocus the giant's attention on her. In a wash of embers, the onislayer greatbow she'd looted from the capital a scant hour earlier was in hand, and she grunted with the effort it took to pull back the string and nock a matching onislayer greatarrow. She grimmly took aim for the back of Yhorm's knee, but she forgot to check her footing, because just as she went to fire, she slipped on a gold goblet she'd been standing on the handle of, her aim thrown off target but still releasing at full force. Even as she sent the bow back to her storage mid-fall, she watched it sail towards her target, striking his rear, and going far further than it should have if it merely hit skin.
"No!" Pyrrha exclaimed, and besides that utterance, they all stared at Vyliria, mortified and in shock.
"Yeah…" the unkindled looked at the grass at her feet. "I'll admit, even at the time I felt extremely bad about that one, and I still do, but yes, I accidentally shot him up the arse with a greatarrow. It certainly got his attention though."
Yhorm stumbled forwards, bellowing in pain, and he whipped around, burning gaze locked to the Irithyllian. He ran at her, horror running through her veins as he closed the distance across the throne room in three steps, fist flying, and an explosion erupting from the impact. The only thing Vylira had to be thankful for was the fact that the fist impacted directly in front of her, because if she was actually struck, she had no doubt she'd be back on the way to the bonfire. As it was, she ragdolled towards the fog wall, tumbling to a stop just in time for the giant to reach her again, scooping her up in one massive hand, before turning and throwing her like a stone towards his throne. She scarcely managed to put her arms in front of her face before she crashed into a pile of rusted gold, sure that the impact had broken her everything. She lied still for a moment, hearing Seigward's weapon going off in the background once more, and Yhorm's pain as he was forced to a knee a third time. She managed to get her estus flask to her lips, and after healing the damage by almost draining the thing, she crawled out of the crater she'd made. Even as she looked across the room, Siegward frantically threw himself out of the way of Yhorm's blade, but the blast of flames from the impact sent him sprawling. A burning kick punted him away, causing him to lose his grip upon his weapon, Yhorm striding to the wounded knight as he desperately dodged attack after attack. Vyliria wrenched her gaze from the two combatants, frantically wracking her mind for anything she could do to actually contribute to the fight at hand. Then her gaze fell upon a familiar stone hilt in a pile of old gold at the foot of the throne.
"There's no way," she muttered aloud as she scrambled towards it, grabbing the hilt and pulling. It came out of the pile, and she blinked a few times as she stared at the near-identical blade to the one Siegward held, though this one may have had a few more inches on it before the point where the blade was broken. "Sweet Gwyn, it actually is."
She shifted her stance to match what the onion knight had been doing, and heard winds whistling as they gathered to and built upon her acquired weapon. I really hope this works, she thought. A few more seconds passed, Siegwards seeing what she held and nearly taking a hit as he froze in surprise, but he still dodged, bolting towards her, Yhorm in hot pursuit, evidently developing tunnel vision for his current target. The wind burst on her blade, multiplying several factors in strength and volume, and she took a breath as she raised it overhead and slammed down. She watched the slice of compressed storms billow forth, striking the giant down to his knees yet again. Vyliria felt drained from using the weapon, yet she powered through, beginning to charge it again, even as she saw her comrade running for his discarded blade in her peripheral vision. She felt it burst to life a few seconds later, yet held, even as Yhorm closed with her. The unkindled was making a gamble, and each thundering step as Yhorm crossed the room made her question her decision that much more. But it turned out to pay off, as a step away from swinging at her, another lance of wind came from Siegward, the howling gale striking the giant once more. Vyliria immediately followed up, aiming for the machete that Yhorm kept catching himself with. It was blasted from his hands, and he fell fully to the floor from the impact. Vyliria walked backwards as she began charging the magic in the sword for a third time, as Yhorm slowly moved his hands to push himself up with a groan. But it wasn't to be, as with a final shout from her comrade, his own attack cleaved straight into the Lord's neck, and his massive head tumbled from his body, Vyliria having to hastily reposition to avoid getting squashed by it. The wind gathering to her own blade dissipated, and seconds later, Yhorm's corpse followed suit, leaving behind a soul and some Cinders, which would need to be returned to the empty throne in Firelink. She began to gather them in an urn, even as Siegward exhaustedly walked over to her.
"Holy shit, we actually pulled that off on the first attempt," she muttered to herself. She noted a bonfire bursting into being at the foot of the now-vacant throne, and the fog wall dissipating at the entrance to the room, but stayed devoted to her current task until it was complete. Upon doing so, she noticed Siegward finally reaching her, panting from the exertion.
"Ha… ha… It seems… I'm in your debt… once again…" he got out between pants. "My thanks… I could not have kept… my promise without you." Yet even so, much like herself, their undead resilience meant they were already regaining their stamina at an absurd rate. Both of their heaves of exhaustion were already fading.
"Twas no problem, Siegward." She motioned to the brilliant yellow flame floating nearby. "If thou desires his soul, you can have it. I don't imagine I'll get too much use from a man-sized version of his weapon."
Siegward actually paused, before removing his bulbous hamlet, revealing the older face beneath, and the short black hair atop his head, already starting to bald away. The thick black mustache covering his upper lip bent as he spoke. "I… thank you." He moved to Yhorm's soul, reverently taking it, before squirreling it away in the same manner all unkindled did with whatever they got their hands on. "You really are a true friend."
"I… might not be the most perceptive of people, but I could tell he was important to thee. Twas the least I could do."
Siegward gave a sad grin in response, before calling forth two brown wooden kegs. Vyliria perked up, taking off her own helmet as the scent of the siegbrau reached her nose. "Now, for a final toast!" the onion knight declared with a shout. "To your valor, and my old friend Yhorm!" He passed one keg to the Irithyllian, and they tapped their beverages together. "Long may the sun shine!" He gave a boisterous laugh, and they both tilted their kegs back and drank deeply.
In the present, Vyliria focused on the world around her once more, dismissing her pyromancy. "We spoke for hours, got completely drunk, he told me stories about Yhorm- before you ask, they aren't mine to tell- and during that time, he gave me not only the recipe to brew more of the stuff if I so wished, but also these." She called forth two kegs of siegbrau, both marked with a blue streak of dye. "This is an especially potent brew of siegbrau. I didn't learn how to make this one, so I've been saving these two for a special occasion. This stuff is potent enough to make me drunk before I'm done with the keg, so it'd probably kill you, so I apologize for not sharing it." She sent them back to her storage. "Right, now if you have questions, feel free to ask."
Ren raised the most pertinent question. "There just happened to be another magic giant-slaying sword at the foot of the throne of said giant?"
"As I said earlier, Yhorm ruled the Profaned Capital before it fell. He was a kind hearted ruler, and a one man army at the same time. He single handedly protected and governed his people, yet the racist pricks still hated him all the same. His only friend for many years was a knight of Catarina who wandered into his domain on a quest. Far before I was born, those swords, called Storm Rulers, were forged specifically to be able to slay Greatwood giants like Yhorm. But the knowledge to craft them was lost, and the last two known Storm Rulers in existence fell into Yhorm's possession, both already broken before he could obtain them; their reduced potency only able to drive giants to their knees. Quite ironic, really. He gave the first to Siegward when he set off to Link the First Flame, making the onion knight promise to use it to slay him should he shirk from his duty, and the second always sat at the foot of his throne, as proof to his subjects that he left them the means to kill him should they so wish."
"That... actually answered all of my questions too," Jaune said. Pyrrha silently nodded, but before she could look to Nora, Penny spoke.
"Do you still have that second Storm Ruler?"
"I was gonna ask that!" Nora whined.
Vyliria rolled her eyes, calling it forth. "You can all have it for a bit if you're interested, just don't hold it over your shoulder. I'd rather not have gale force winds being frivolously flung about." Nora deflated further. "Okay, fine, Nora can do it once, but only after we're done eating, and you need to be facing away from the rest of us when you use it."
"YES!" the ginger bomber cried joyously. "I can't wait!"
"But that means you'd have to eat Ren's pancakes faster," Vyliria commented with a wicked grin.
Nora looked horror-struck. "But… if I eat them faster, I can't enjoy them. And if I take my time, then I have to wait to use the magic wind-sword! Nooooooo!" she raised her hands, shouting dramatically to the sky. "Ren," she said through tear stained eyes, "comfort meeeeeeee!"
The other four in the group began to silently laugh as Ren awkwardly walked up to Nora, bending down and putting a hand on her shoulder, suddenly stiffening as Nora sprung up and wrapped him in a hug, pancakes temporarily forgotten in her sorrow. Except, since Ren had bent down, and Nora had sprung up, Ren suddenly found his face in Nora's feminine assets. The laughter paused as Ren's face went red, before resuming explosively, Vyliria going as far as to fall over on her side, actual tears leaking from her eyes.
Dear Gwyn, she thought, I guess I did need a break.
()
A/N: Nora thinking of Ren as her pancake-making husbando popped into my mind completely randomly, and I laughed so much at the thought that I instantly knew I had to work it in somewhere. Also, eye color can shift. This happens IRL. My eyes started out blue when I was born, were green by the time I was 14, and shifted to gray (which occurs in less than 1% of humanity) when I was 20. On a side note, I'm now only one step in iris-tone from being able to stare Grimm to death… this is also another reason as to why Vyliria's eyes are the colors they are. Not only do I think heterochromia looks cool AF, but it's also a reference to my eyes changing color IRL, with one of her eyes being green, and the other silver (the Dark Souls character designer is very detailed… but very unintuitive, and after 20 minutes, I decided silver was close enough to gray that I could move on with my life).
Well, here's the new fashion souls for Jaune and Pyrrha. For Jaune, I'm completely bullshiting on the basilisk-hide and titanite reinforced armor. I just thought that it would be appropriate to the whole "elite knight" thing. As for Pyrrha's armor, picture ancient Greek hoplite armor in terms of style, but more like clothing in armor form in terms of appearance. I know Phalanx wasn't that original for the Grimm spear, especially because I'm sure one of the 1st 2 souls games had a boss called Phalanx, but I'd spent twenty minutes trying to come up with a name and was still drawing a blank, so I went with that and moved on.
Vyliria's (figuratively) busting her balls to try and get better, shaking off the rust from her other weapons. Her friends are concerned.
And then we get the story of this universe's bossfight with Yhorm. So, Ultimate Kuuga, if you're still reading this series, here's that bossfight you asked for. Nice and Dark Souls with a twist of messed up comedy, kinda like how I write this story in general. As for that greatarrow... Well, in the first plan, she shot Yhorm in the knee, but then I made the Skyrim reference earlier in the chapter. I then realized that if he's focusing on Siegward, there's a good chance he's not facing Vyliria. Then rectal-probing-via-greatarrow popped into my head, and I decided to run with it.
Also, because they're ahead of schedule, they killed the geist before bumping into the village that was threatened by it. Considering that the only upgrade that would happen there in this timeline is Jaune getting the greatsword mechashift on Crocea Mors, I may just skip it entirely… and possibly skip the greatsword as well, because I think that the only reason he could upgrade it was because he had metal from Pyrrha's gear. That's what happens when you derail canon.
Anaywas, I decided that I want to get Renora going before Atlas, so I'm abusing the fact that everyone's in a much better mood since Penny and Pyrrha aren't dead in order to make things happen faster. That's all for now. See you all next update!
